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THE BLUE ROOM 


BY 


COSMO HAMILTON 

ii 


“ Into the Blue Room thou shalt not look” 


WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 

WILSON V. CHAMBERS 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1920 




Copyright, ig20 , 

By Cosmo Hamilton. 

All rights reserved 

Published October, 1920 


0CT 23 1920 


NorfoooU $tesa 

Set up and eleftrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


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©Cl. A597965 \v. 





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THE BLUE ROOM 












































































































































































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THE BLUE ROOM 


PART I 
I 

“ Western Union on the phone, sir.” 

Everything had conspired to make Mr. Wain- 
wright late for breakfast, — an elusive stud, an in- 
tricate and diabolical nest of pins in a clean shirt, a 
snick of a razor on the lobe of an ear and the con- 
sequent drip of blood, — and the 8 :16 waited for no 
man, not even the President of the Wainwright Na- 
tional Bank. 

“ All right, Father, I ’ll take it.” 

Cool and efficient as usual Martha arranged in 
front of the frazzled commuter a cup of coffee 
milked for instant consumption, an enticing ar- 
rangement of eggs and bacon duly peppered and 
salted, and two slices of toasted bread buttered in 
anticipation. “ There are seven and a half minutes 
before you need go,” she added, smoothing down a 
feather on the top of her father’s fine head, “ make 
a good breakfast, darling.” It was an incontestable 
fact that Jonathan Wainwright was the President 
of his bank. It was equally incontestable that 
Martha his eldest daughter was the President of his 
home. 


4 


THE BLUE ROOM 


There was a whoop of joy from the telephone 
closet in the hall, a rush back into the dining-room, 
and a message read in a young, round voice which 
trembled with something more than excitement. 

“ Embark this morning Leviathan with whole 
bunch Major Bill Mortimer in charge loud cheers 
Tom.” 

Nearly performing the nose trick with a mouth- 
ful of coffee, Wainwright set down his cup, sprang 
to his feet, seized the girl with the dancing eyes and 
whirled her round the pompous and astonished room. 
The dead accuracy of banking had not succeeded in 
drying up the well of emotion in this man’s soul. 

Breakfast discarded, train forgotten, conferences 
left in mid-air, and with a damn-all feeling for the 
responsibilities of the day in the face of the glorious 
news of his son’s escape alive and whole from the 
great graveyard of France, old man Wainwright 
with the heart of a boy and the love of a father 
dashed upstairs to his ailing wife, and shut the door. 
No one but she could share, or be permitted to see, 
his utter thankfulness. 

The chauffeur, with his eyes on his watch, sat 
waiting in the car. 

For a moment, breathless and disheveled, Martha 
stood alone in the big room with the slip of paper 
held tight against her heart. But when, with a little 
choking cry, she raised it to her lips it was not the 
name of her brother that she kissed first but of the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


5 


other man, the gallant Bill who had n’t the remotest 
idea that, within a mile of his parental house, there 
lived a little girl whose constant prayers had helped 
to keep his name from being stamped upon German 
bullets. 

At the first warning honk from the car Martha 
also took to the stairs, nipped up three at a time and 
tapped on the door which must not, her gift of sym- 
pathy told her, be opened. 

“ Fa-ther!” 

“ I ’m not catching this train. Hang work ! ” 

Again the honk. 

“ Fa-ther.” 

“ I tell you I ’m chucking the city to-day. Can’t I 
give it a miss in balk once in a lifetime? ” 

And then a quiet voice from the bed at the side of 
which knelt old man Wainwright, — not so precious 
old as all that goes either. “ I think you ’d better 
go, dear.” 

“ Yes, but Tom ’s coming home. My Heaven, 
what ’s the matter with a round of golf with Martha 
to celebrate? . . .” 

Once more the honk, — the last. 

“ Fa-ther! ” 

“ Oh well then ! ” He scrambled to his feet. He 
had intended to go. There was so much to be done. 
The financial situation in Europe was in utter chaos 
and it behooved American bankers to shake off pa- 
rochialism and look across the narrowed Atlantic. 
But he was n’t going to let Martha see his face until 
he had it under control, or the chauffeur either. 


6 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ So long, Elizabeth. Thank the good God our 
boy ’s coming back ! ” 

But after all his head was turned away from 
Martha as he passed her and went down. A man 
needs sons and daughters before he can understand 
the meaning of love. He must also have built up a 
big business to appreciate the difficulty of letting it 
run without him. 

From the bedroom window Martha watched the 
car disappear and lingered there, eyeing the trees in 
their first faint flush of green, and listening to the 
mating call of birds. She, too, wanted to let some- 
thing go out of her eyes before she turned to her 
mother. She felt that they were blazing like beacons. 

“ He ’ll be in time,” she said. 

“ To find me out and about, I trust.” Mrs. Wain- 
wright added up the days of the Leviathan' s voyage. 
Whatever happened she must meet that ship. 

“ Martha!” 

Beacons or not that little cry must be answered. 
. . . They held each other in inarticulate gratitude 
and wept a little for joy. Those two years had been 
almost too long. 

“ But I must n’t keep you, my dear,” said the 
mother at last. “ What .should I do without you? ” 

With visions of a long ordering list, a new cook 
to diplomatize and the man to see about the new 
awnings Martha went to the glass to straighten her 
hair and prepare herself for action. She turned at 
the door and waved a kiss. She could trust herself 
now, she thought. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


7 


Mrs. Wainwright’s eyes were very sharp. 
“What other good news have you heard ?” she 
asked. 

But Martha was out before the question was fin- 
ished. It ’s a trick all daughters have. And before 
going down to take hold of the reins so often and so 
fretfully resigned by the delicate woman whose 
bronchial tubes made her a frequent prisoner to her 
bed, the girl ran along the passage to her own room 
and opened the little box in which she hid her se- 
cret. . . . The snap-shot was of a tall, wiry, dark- 
haired man in polo kit, with one foot on the rail of 
a chair and the sun slanting across a laughing face. 
Photography failed to show the deep tan of the skin, 
the gray of the eyes or the toudh of red in the small 
mustache. But it captured the virility and strength 
of the body, the width of chest, and the hardness of 
a well-developed forearm. It was Bill Mortimer 
playing the last of a lifetime of games before he got 
into khaki to play the one whose ultimate goal was 
set up at the further end of a field of death. . . . 

Not with the skin-deep hero-worship of a child of 
seventeen had she secured this picture but with the 
sort of love that takes root in the heart of a woman 
and if it never bursts into blossom and eventually 
has by its side another plant remain* forever the 
first and the best. In his father’s house away across 
the meadows and the woods she had met Bill Morti- 
mer and trembled as the arrow had winged into her 
heart. Perhaps a dozen times since then she had 
listened to his laugh, shivered at the careless touch 


8 


THE BLUE ROOM 


of his hand, stored up the easy words that he had 
said to her (“ the little Wainwright kid ”), watched 
him, through a blinding mist of tears, drive off to 
the city, knowing instinctively that he had been at 
home to say good-by, and then, without his even re- 
membering that she lived, patterned the floor of 
Heaven with her prayers. . . . They had been 
heard and he was coming back ! . . . “ Hope sees a 
star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a 
wing.” 

II 

It was ten o’clock before Martha had set her house 
in order for the day. The new cook, an Irish 
woman with antagonistic eyes and the manners of 
a prizefighter, had demanded an interview. Like 
many others of the same kind this had taken place in 
the library where at a desk at a respectful distance 
from her father’s Martha docketed her bills and 
sorted away her receipts. With a back as flat as a 
billiard table and a face like that of one of those 
white horses which hauled great lorries about in the 
narrow streets in the roaring Forties, this terrible 
woman with the romantic name of Eileen McCar- 
row gave out her first list of grievances. Her bed- 
room was too small and the window faced east. 
She must have a new set of kitchen utensils and one 
of those white enamel arrangements full of drawers 
for tea and coffee and pepper and salt and mustard 
and flour and a hundred other things which help to 
decorate a kitchen and are never by any chance 


THE BLUE ROOM 


9 


used. The waitress might perhaps remain but the 
rest of the servants and especially the chauffeur 
must be cleared out at once. “ Otherwise, as God ’s 
my judge, I ’ll not be stayin’, an’ that ’s flat.” 

To all of which, with a deep knowledge of the 
breed, Martha replied, “ There ’s a nice train back 
to town at 12.22. If you will have your trunk 
packed by twelve o’clock I will have a taxi here for 
you.” Whereupon Eileen McCarrow, a mere com- 
mon bully like the rest of her type, gave one quick 
glance at the charming figure with the steady blue 
eyes, snorted and disappeared into the kitchen. 
“ I ’ll be givin’ der place a chance,” she murmured, 
as she stumped away. 

After one more visit to her mother to see that 
she had everything that she needed, Martha went 
out into the garden. It was grass cutting day and 
the two gardeners, Tony Caruso and Leonardo 
Benvenuti, were typical Wops and had a way, when 
the day was warm and nobody was keeping an eye 
upon them, of leaving their machines behind a 
zareba of trees, of making themselves particularly 
comfortable under their shade and discussing the 
virtues of Orlando and the intricacies of the League 
of Nations while they ate youthful onions newly 
plucked from the warm earth. It was very human 
and characteristic, but wages, like everything else, 
were high, and grass had a way of growing exu- 
berantly in the spring. Being possessed of an ex- 
treme amount of moral courage Martha routed 
them into the open and warned them that if the 


10 THE BLUE ROOM 

lawns were not properly cut by twelve o’clock there 
would be two more picturesque Italians looking for 
new jobs. Both of them had a healthy respect for 
the girl who used simple words with quiet emphasis 
and were very well aware of the fact that empty 
threats were not in her line. It was wonderful to 
see with what energy these two undersized, un- 
washed specimens of a sunny country immediately 
pursued the even tenor of th^ir way. The clack of 
their two machines inspired all near-by birds to 
song. 

Armed with the slip of paper which meant as 
much to Bill’s people as it did to herself and her 
father and mother Martha made her way down to 
the road which led to the old Mortimer place, the 
landmark of that part of Westchester. About half 
a mile from her own house it lay far back from the 
road surrounded by trees and led up to under a long 
and winding avenue. Somewhere about a hundred 
and fifty years old, its numerous windows looked 
over five hundred acres of woods and farm land. 
A dear old rambling building upon which the hand 
of a vandal had never been laid, with a high Co- 
lonial portico which gave it dignity and charm, it 
wore an air of extreme well-being and mothered 
many out-houses and a low stable building with a 
square courtyard which had obviously been built in 
the days of coaching. Every inch of it reeked with 
history and was pervaded with the spirits of those 
fine Americans who had carried on the traditions of 
Washington. A sunken rose garden with warm 


THE BLUE ROOM 


11 


brick paths caught the eye as one approached, and a 
dozen great oak trees stood sentinel on the edge of 
a rolling lawn. 

Not altogether with the approval of her good 
parents, to whom the extraordinary story of the 
Mortimers was a matter of frequent and rather 
starchy discussion, Martha had become the affec- 
tionate and admiring protegee of the distinguished 
white-haired lady who had been inspired to retire 
from the world at precisely the right moment. The 
fascination of spring for autumn and of a young 
girl for a woman whose life had run its active 
course, naturally came into this friendship, and 
hardly a day passed that did not find these two 
wandering together among the old gardens newly 
astir and ebullient, the one to listen eagerly to the 
stories about Bill which the other was only too anx- 
ious to tell. It was with the utmost pleasure 
therefore that Martha hurried round to break the 
good news which had just been received over the 
cable from Tom. 

To Martha who rose at seven o’clock the day was 
no longer young. To the Mortimers it was only 
just beginning. 

A man of elaborate portliness, important pres- 
ence and canonical dignity was tapping a barometer 
that hung on a wide beam to the left of the front 
door as the girl arrived at the house, her butter- 
colored hair bare to the sun. By the subordinates 
who were ruled by him with that mixture of ingen- 
ious blasphemy and autocratic firmness which be- 


12 


THE BLUE ROOM 


longs to drill sergeants Albery was known as the 
greyhound, because he made a little hair go a long 
way. The pun was a bad one, but its effect on 
people who had never heard it before and who mar- 
veled at the painstaking way in which several 
strands of black hair were plastered upon an other- 
wise bald head was an instant gust of mirth. He 
was one of the last of a breed of butlers who re- 
gard their work as a vocation and come to it with 
the tradition of many butler ancestors. 

Hearing a quick light step on the veranda he 
turned and bowed, with just the faint beginning of 
a respectful smile. “ Good morning, Miss 
Martha,” he said, his voice denoting a lifelong run 
of enviable wine-cellars. 

“ Good morning, Albery. Is Mrs. Mortimer 
down yet ? ” 

Not yet, Miss. Nor Mr. Mortimer neither. 
And there is breakfast to go, during which I must 
not allow them to be disturbed.” 

Oh yes, I forgot that. But I ’ve run over with 
great news and I thought I ought to give it at once.” 

Albery shrugged his shoulders and went so far 
as to permit himself to chuckle. “ It ’s as much 
as my life ’s worth to advance a remark during the 
process of the first meal, Miss, — let the news be 
good or bad. But if you have an hour to spare and 
would be pleased to spend it in the garden. . . .” 

Martha smiled, nodded, wheeled about and with 
the precious piece of paper on which she had 
scribbled Tom’s message clasped tightly in her hand 


THE BLUE ROOM 


13 


went over a clean-shaven lawn and along a wide, 
tree-shaded road to the stables. She had never 
ventured to break in upon the almost religious rou- 
tine of that house so early before and knowing the 
cut and dried ways of those two old people almost 
as well as Albery did, appreciated the necessity of 
elimination without further discussion. There 
was a whinny of welcome from an old hunter with 
a white star between his eyes and a series of move- 
ments in a line of loose boxes. The girl with the 
soft voice and courageous hand had many friends 
in that spotless place. She would spend an hour 
there with delight. 

Ill 

In the room in which the famous General Bar- 
clay Mortimer was brought into the world and, 
eventually, at the ripe age of eighty-four departed 
from it, and in which Judge William Mortimer, 
Governor of New York State, fought death for 
exactly a year before being beaten in a contest 
which is always an unequal one, Mr. Barclay Morti- 
mer, ex-commodore of the New York Yacht Club, 
was making up for breakfast. 

Being now a man of sixty, who had sailed 
through a gorgeous and much to be deplored life 
with the face of Adonis and the figure of Apollo, it 
goes without saying that Barclay Mortimer had a 
standing grievance against “that damned Anno 
Domini,” as he called it, which had laid relentless 
hands upon his handsome features and perfectly 


14 ' 


THE BLUE ROOM 


balanced body. With the pathetic reluctance of a 
woman who has been a celebrated beauty to face 
the sere and yellow, he made use of every known 
weapon with which to disguise the brutal and dis- 
figuring blows of the implacable hand of time. His 
dressing table was covered, therefore, with bottles 
whose mysterious liquids were known only to him- 
self and his valet, — dyes and astringents and the 
rest prepared by ingenious people who catered to 
the vanity of frail humanity at a profit of several 
hundred per cent. If the daily process of making 
up was long and tiresome its effect, in a doubtful 
light, was to take ten years off Mortimer’s appear- 
ance and give him the supreme satisfaction of say- 
ing to himself, as he looked at his white-haired wife 
across the breakfast table, “ Either, my dear friend, 
she must have snatched you out of the cradle or you 
are her youngest brother.” 

At the moment when Martha had arrived breath- 
less and filled with a generous desire to share her 
joy with Bill’s parents, Barclay Mortimer was 
standing in front of a pier glass dabbing his well- 
shaped mustache with an evil smelling liquid which 
had been poured upon a small sponge. Crouching 
behind him the faithful Denham was lacing up a 
pair of stays which, in doing away with a slight 
rotundity in the neighborhood of the lower but- 
tons of the waistcoat, gave the elderly victim the ap- 
pearance of a pouter pigeon. The sunny brown of 
hair which should have been a benign and woolly 
white was a shade darker than the mustache, the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


15 


color scheme of which was to give an effect of sun 
bleach. The eyebrows matched the hair, whose 
center parting was continued down to the nape of 
the neck. The face had been massaged first with a 
small electrical instrument and then with cream of 
honey and finally cleaned off with a lemon flavored 
wash mixed with alcohol. Ultimate powder, neatly 
applied, had been fanned away. A thousand dollars 
had been paid to a French beauty doctor in New York 
so that Denham might achieve the secrets of all the 
art and craftiness of preservation and disguise, and 
he performed his daily task with infinite care and 
affection. He had been twenty years in the serv- 
ice of “ the old buck,” as he called him, and it was 
a matter of personal pride to turn him out looking 
like an actor manager of ripe age made up to play 
the part of a leading juvenile. The keen sense of 
humor that was possessed by them both lightened 
the hours devoted to this process of camouflage. 

Having risen at eight it was ten o’clock before 
Mr. Barclay Mortimer regarded himself as finished, 
and took a last look in the pier glass that stood be- 
tween the two windows of a bedroom which was 
the acme of comfort and was filled with delightful 
old pieces of Colonial furniture. 

Tall and slight and graceful, dressed in a beauti- 
fully cut suit of Irish homespun golf clothes which 
gave out a pleasant reek of bog and tobacco, with 
brown stockings and white shoes with brown leather 
strappings which required the hand of an artist to 
clean, the old gentleman whose abominable past 


16 


THE BLUE ROOM 


gave him great joy to contemplate tucked a colored 
handkerchief into his pocket and turned with a 
smile. “Congratulations, Denham,” he said, “I 
feel fifty-two and look forty-eight. You actually 
achieve what Canute attempted.” 

“ Thank you, Sir,” replied Denham, standing 
back with the air of a portrait painter. He didn’t 
know who Canute was, and didn’t care. The re- 
mark was a favorite one and he understood that 
it was the last word in praise. It meant that he 
could now retire to the servants’ porch to smoke a 
pipe and read the morning paper with the complete 
satisfaction of having done his job for the day. 

At five minutes past ten, as usual, the old buck 
left his room, went jauntily along the wide corri- 
dor that was hung with the full length portraits 
of his deserving ancestors, descended the stairs 
humming an air from “ Sumurun,” crossed the hall 
under the disapproving eyes of Mortimers who had 
taken life with desperate seriousness, and swung 
into the breakfast porch to be welcomed by an out- 
burst of song from innumerable canaries and an 
enigmatical smile from Mrs. Barclay Mortimer. 

The white haired lady, who was three years 
younger than her husband, had been down, as us- 
ual, for an hour. Having wisely decided to let na- 
ture alone and grow old gracefully she had had an 
hour to give to the garden, that wonderful and 
peaceful old garden, and had brought back with her 
a bunch of lilies of the valley, the most virginal and 
modest of all flowers. A woman built on noble 


THE BLUE ROOM 


17 


lines, tall and straight and willowy, there was all 
about her, despite her snowy hair, that essence 
of loveliness that a beautiful woman never quite 
loses if she is content to leave well alone. She had 
real dignity and charm and kindliness, a low soft 
laugh in which there was something suggestive of 
the notes of a harpsichord and at the tail end of her 
dark eyes a hint of ironic humor. Especially about 
her hands with their long thin fingers and polished 
nails was her breeding and fastidiousness to be de- 
tected. She permitted herself the use of one inimi- 
table pearl ring, around which there were tender 
memories. There would have been no breakfast for 
her if she had known that Bill, the apple of her eye, 
was aboard the transport that was to bring him, 
with other members of the Headquarters staff, from 
Brest. 

They met, these two, more like people who were 
newly married than those who had been married and 
almost wholly separated for thirty-five years. Rais- 
ing her hand to his lips with an air of respectful 
admiration and courtliness Mortimer gave her his 
usual greeting. “ Good morning, Madame. How 
charming you look ! ” 

To which, with the faintest suggestion of amuse- 
ment, she replied, “ Good morning, Commodore. I 
return the compliment with interest.” 

And then followed the inevitable business, 
watched with extreme sympathy by the silent Al- 
bery, of escorting her to her chair, placing it for 
her and pushing it in, — all done with the studied 


18 


THE BLUE ROOM 


gracefulness of old fashioned comedy as though be- 
fore an audience, — as indeed it was. In addition 
to the many canaries there were, in that glassed-in 
breakfast porch, a collection of parrots and para- 
keets, love birds in large cages and a tiny marmoset 
chained to a perch. 

Then followed the first meal of the day, during 
which letters were opened and commented upon, the 
front pages of the papers glanced at and discussed, 
the morning welcome extended to a couple of ex- 
tremely well-bred water-spaniels whose silky black 
curls had been carefully brushed and parted. An 
hour of a day which had no duties and few occupa- 
tions was thus delightfully killed. 

The underlying irony in the comedy of this felici- 
tous scene would have given immense joy to those 
worldly people who had known the handsome Bar- 
clay Mortimer in the zenith of his career as a lady 
killer and sportsman and the lovely Lylyth as the 
leader of New York society on whose entrance to 
her box at the Metropolitan Opera House the vast 
audience had nearly risen to its feet. 

An eccentric but very human couple this, who had 
been driven by encroaching years reluctantly to 
retire from a world that was full of things to enjoy 
and sensations with which to experiment and were 
now playing their parts sexlessly at the latter end of 
a marriage which they had never properly played at 
the beginning of it. They might still have continued 
separately on their way to the outpost of eternity 
had they not been mutually bound by two common 


THE BLUE ROOM 


19 


desires, — the one to cultivate each other’s acquaint- 
ance in the old house beloved by them both, the 
other to bask in the smiles of Bill, whom they 
adored, delighted in and conspired to marry to a girl 
young and sweet enough to be the mother of a new 
line of Mortimers. To this good end, — good, that 
is, from their own point of view, — they were the 
last to take into account the rakish record of their 
only son, — they had their eyes on Martha Wain- 
wright. In her they saw all the makings of a fine 
young reviver of their honored but recently un- 
cared-for name, a girl born of honest and scrupu- 
lous parents, of responsible and sensible upbring- 
ing, unspoiled by wealth and fashionable school- 
ing, who would come to marriage with an old fash- 
ioned ecstasy and that keen sense of duty which 
seems to have gone out with the puffed sleeve and 
the bustle. They divided this supreme ambition be- 
tween them and while waiting for its fulfillment trod 
the little private stage of their own with all the zest 
and whimsicality that hard living had left to them. 

Follies cease only with the flight of youth, — and 
sometimes not even then. 

IV 

When Mrs. Mortimer rose to say “ sweet- 
sweet” to her pet canary before going up to her 
boudoir to write her bi-weekly letter to Bill, the 
Commodore lingered in the breakfast porch. 

Whether he was inspired to a genuine sentiment 
by the glory of that spring morning, or merely 


20 


THE BLUE ROOM 


grasped at an excuse to see whether he had not 
wholly forgotten his gift of saying delightful noth- 
ings to a woman, or felt the faint flicker of his old 
hot fire of amorousness, no one could have told and 
he did n’t stop to discover. The fact remained that 
presently he placed himself in his wife’s way in 
front of the door, and put a quiver of emotion into 
his well modulated voice. 

“ Lylyth, my dear,” he said humbly and with 
great tenderness, “ let me say for once how greatly 
I appreciate the privilege of this St. Martin’s sum- 
mer with you.” 

Mrs. Mortimer gave one of her low soft laughs. 
This little outburst was totally unexpected and was 
like a speech to which no cue had been provided. 
It did not surprise her, however, or more than 
lightly touch one of the easily reached spots of a 
vanity that age had not yet withered. He often 
said such things at carefully chosen moments. 
“My dear Barclay,” she answered teasingly, “I 
have the mail to catch and a long letter to write. 
Please may I go? ” 

“ No, no,” he said, taking one of her long thin 
hands in both his own and holding it against his 
heart, — a trick that he had often practised with a 
certain Italian prima donna away back in ’89. 
“ No, no. Stay just for a moment. I am moved 
to speak sincerely, and surely there is enough room 
for silence in the grave? ” He could just see him- 
self in an oval glass that hung at the other end of 
the porch. His attitude pleased him. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


21 


“ Cut it as short as you can then. I want to tell 
Bill about the new filly and write more tactful things 
about the future of the family.” She let him see 
that she took his so-called sincerity with a pinch of 
salt, but made no real effort to go. She owned 
that there was something curiously intriguing in 
living under the same roof with a man who had 
frankly taken his pleasures elsewhere ever since the 
decline of their honeymoon thirty-five years ago. 
It was like standing in front of a fire of spent em- 
bers that was railed off by a guard. 

But Mortimer was not to be put off. He had 
breakfasted well. He felt fifty-two and looked 
forty-eight. The fight over the formation of a 
League of Nations that was to put an end to fight- 
ing was almost over. Bill must soon be home 
again. He was well and happy. Under such ex- 
cellent conditions it seemed a pity not to draw once 
more upon the fountain of his eloquence, — even if 
it were shrewdly understood and unappreciated. 
“ My dear,” he went on, holding his pose, “ I know 
that you have much to forgive and many things to 
forget. I have not been a good husband to you. 
Having seen you daily now. for several months and 
discovered in you a host of lovely qualities that 
escaped me in my riotous youth, I want to say how 
deeply I deplore my former blindness and how 
greatly I desire to atone, now that we have come to- 
gether at last, for my many omissions.” 

“ You speak like a book, Barclay,” said his wife. 
“ If you were always able to command such lan- 


22 


THE BLUE ROOM 


guage no wonder you were such a success with wo- 
men. Some of them fall more easily to style than 
to brute force, — Juliet for instance.” She laughed 
again and drew aside. “ There. Now you can get 
a better view of yourself in the glass.” It was per- 
haps a little cruel. 

But still Mortimer was not put off. It is true 
that for the moment he was peeved at being seen 
through so quickly, but his irresistible sense of hu- 
mor came to the rescue. He echoed her laugh, let 
go her hand and opened the door. “ Give my love 
to Bill,” he said, “ and tell him that I have lost four 
pounds by depriving myself of butter. No wonder 
that you were such a success, Madame. And by 
the way — ” 

“Yes?” She turned at the door. There was a 
charming note of camaraderie in her voice. 

“ Talking of style, I have just finished editing a 
brief resume of my life for the family records. 
Shall I read it to you to-night after dinner ? ” 

“ Oh please,” she said. “ That will be exciting. 
So much that you have done has only come to me 
in gossip. Shall I publish it after you have gone ? ” 

A shudder ran over Mortimer’s wasted frame. 
He hated to hear of death. 

“ Oh Lylyth ! ” he said, like a man who had been 
enjoying a bout of fencing and was pricked by an 
opponent who had removed the button from his foil. 

She threw out a repentant hand to him, touched 
by his obvious horror. “ Forgive me, Barclay. It 
was a bad joke,” and left him alone with the cana- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


23 


ries, the parrots, the little marmoset and a sudden 
mental picture of a procession to the old graveyard 
of his forbears, which made him turn as cold as a 
fish. He looked every day of his sixty years. 

V 

But Mrs. Mortimer’s letter was never to be writ- 
ten. 

Emerging pontifically from a door in the hall 
Albery came forward and met her as she was about 
to go up to her sanctum. “ Miss Martha Wain- 
wright has been waiting for an hour in the stables, 
Madam,” he said as one might make a statement 
about the weather. Several generations of butler- 
ship had gone to the making of his perfect lack of 
interest. He was as a matter of fact intensely curi- 
ous to know what had brought Martha over with 
that beacon burning in her eyes, and eager impa- 
tience had urged him to much scathing and bitter 
sarcasm in the kitchen. 

“ Why ? ” asked Mrs. Mortimer, sensing that the 
girl had something important to tell. The late 
afternoon was her usual time to come. 

“ I cannot say, I ’m sure, Madam. But the 
young lady seemed to be very excited, if I may be 
allowed the expression.” 

“ Fetch her at once, — no. I’ll go myself. . . . 
It ’s Bill,” she added mentally, as she went out of the 
sun-bathed garden and round the house and across 
the lawn to the stables, with a quickening of the 
pulse. “ It ’s Bill. I know it is. She must have 


24 THE BLUE ROOM 

been ordained to be the one to bring us news of him, 

— we, who have chosen her to be his wife.” 
Reaching the stables she called with all the voice 

that her speed had left her, — and drew up short, 
stabbed by an anguished thought. It might be bad 
news! Bill might have come to trouble. The pa- 
per must have had something in it that she had 
missed. 

Martha heard the cry and came out of the warm 
harness room that was closely hung with bridles 
and saddles all of which were oiled and polished. 
She had been standing there alone for half an 
hour with the star of hope blinding her with its 
light. 

“ Here I am, Mrs. Mortimer,” she said. 

The lady whose face had gone as white as her hair 
stood very still and upright. If she was to be re- 
quired to meet a blow she would take it as she had 
taken all the others, — with her chin up. 

“ It ’s about Bill,” she said. 

With a great struggle to show only sisterly joy, 

— because her feelings as to Bill must be hidden 
even from the eyes of his mother, Martha handed 
over the slip of paper that vibrated with her kisses. 
“ A cable from Tom. It came early this morning. 
I have been waiting to show it to you.” 

As Mrs. Mortimer read the message everything 
about her relaxed. She gave a little fluttering sob 
and over her still lovely face crept an expression 
that was like that of the Madonna. . . . Was it 
after all curious that although her only son had been 


THE BLUE ROOM 


25 


born out of love and had turned out to be a modern 
edition of his father he had always been the one su- 
preme factor of her artificial life, — the apple of 
her eye? . . . “ Thank God,” she said. “ We are 
to see him again.” And she put out her hands, with 
a peculiar gravity, and drew the girl into her arms 
and kissed her. If all her plans ran smoothly and 
she could lead the harum-scarum Bill into settling 
down while he was still under the reaction of war, 
here was the mother of her grandson. 

But she was startled to find herself holding a 
young thing, a moment ago so cool and aloof, whose 
whole body shook with a very tempest of tears. . . . 
This was not the relief that came to a sister, — 
even to one so affectionate as Martha. Then it 
must be for Bill. It must mean that this little girl, 
like so many others scattered about the earth, had 
set Bill up in her heart and, with something of the 
same love as that of a mother, had also spent those 
long and anxious months at the feet of God. 

“ My darling,” she said. 

And for many minutes these two women, bound 
by a tie that nothing could undo, remained in each 
other’s arms, in mutual thanksgiving. 

At last Martha conquered herself and drew away. 
No one must share her secret. “ Tom and I have 
always been g — great pals,” she said, catching her 
breath. 

“ I know, my dear, I know.” 

“ And he ’s . . . , he ’s been through some of 
the worst fighting.” 


26 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ I ’m sure he has, quite sure.” 

“ And he ’s the only son, you see, and that 
means s — so much to father and mother.” 

“ Yes, indeed.” 

“ And one has had to try to be very brave all this 
time for their sake.” 

“ I know.” 

“ So that ’s why I c — cried like that.” 

“ Of course.” 

And in the little silence that followed, the girl 
earnestly examined the woman’s face to see if there 
was the least suggestion of disbelief in her explana- 
tion, and the woman, who had great sympathy and 
a keen remembrance of her own heart as a child, 
never gave herself away. She too had had a secret 
and the man had never found it out. She would 
make it her business to see, more now than ever, that 
Martha should be numbered among the lucky ones. 
Sooner or later Martha must make some reference 
to Bill, and she wondered, smiling, in what way she 
would manage it. 

“ It ’s just like Tom to cable like that,” Martha 
went on, with all her confidence back. “You should 
have seen how father took it ! ” 

“ I wish I had.” 

“ He whirled me round the room and when he 
rushed up to Mother the whole house seemed to 
shake.” 

“ I ’m not surprised, my dear.” 

And then it came, and in so naive a way as to 
make Mrs. Mortimer want to take the girl once 


27 


THE BLUE ROOM 

more into her arms and tell her that the secret was 
a secret no longer. 

“ 1 suppose Tom put that in about Major Morti- 
mer so that I might come and tell you,” she said, 
standing with wide eyes and a perfectly expression- 
less face. 

But Mrs. Mortimer did not allow herself even the 
ghost of a smile. She lived up, in spite of great 
temptation, to her usual fine spirit of sportsmanship. 

I suppose he did,” she answered. “ It was ex- 
tremely thoughtful of Tom. Probably Bill’s own 
cable has been delayed somewhere.” And that was 
what had happened. 

I am glad to be the one to bring you such good 
news, Mrs. Mortimer.” 

So am I, you dear thing.” And one of the long 
thin fastidious hands rested affectionately on 
Martha’s little fair head. “ Let us go together to 
the Commodore. It will make him feel years 
younger than he does already.” 

And as they went back to the house arm in arm 
the new leaves on the twisted boughs of the old 
family sentinels seemed to break into applause, as 
though they approved of Mrs. Mortimer’s choice of 
the mother of a new generation. And when the 
old buck, from his place on the veranda, saw the ap- 
proach of his wife with a girl whose face he could 
not recognize at that distance, he preened himself, 
gave a fluke to his mustache and rehearsed a sen- 
tence appropriate to youth and spring. 

In choosing Martha as the girl to be Bill’s wife 


28 THE BLUE ROOM 

Mrs. Mortimer had told herself and the Commo- 
dore that the only difficulty which faced them was to 
arrange a romantic meeting. With the natural 
conceit of a mother it had never occurred to her to 
question the fact that Martha would jump at Bill. 
Bill was Bill and no girl who wasn’t blind and 
dumb could possibly resist his attractions. Good 
Lord, he had had few rebuffs hitherto, — the bad 
boy. But, all the same, how much easier the bring- 
ing of these two together would be now, with love 
already on one side. On the other there was, be- 
cause nature always stood by her precedents, and 
the escape from death was always followed by a 
desire to perpetuate, a new sentiment, a hitherto un- 
required capacity for fatherhood and home-life, 
and, of course, the legal possession of an adoring 
wife in the first flush of youth. Mrs. Mortimer, 
knowing the male species so well, banked on that. 
The question as to whether it would be fair or wise 
to give the girl a few hints as to Bill’s passionate 
interludes before she stood with him at the altar, 
and thus provide her with the chance to draw back 
in the event of disillusion, had never entered her 
mind. If the unsophisticated and romantic girl 
had made Bill her hero, blameless and without re- 
proach, let him remain so. One of her tenets had 
always been that into the Blue Room thou shalt not 
look. And another that a man’s life was his own 
although a woman’s must belong wholly to the man 
who made her his wife. 

It must be remembered that Mrs. Mortimer dated 


THE BLUE ROOM 


29 


back to that amazing period before woman’s rights 
had been brought forward to make things more 
difficult. 

VI 

That evening, at the time when Martha’s daily 
duties were over and she had gone to bed to dream 
of the man whose photograph was under her pillow, 
Barclay Mortimer and the white-haired lady went 
into what was called the morning room of their very 
proper house. It might better have been called the 
all-day room because it was here that a long line of 
masters and mistresses had always gravitated to 
read and talk, write letters and play backgammon, 
cribbage and whist. Long and narrow, with win- 
dows at both ends and a large open fireplace opposite 
to the arch that separated it from the more impos- 
ing drawing room, it had about it an air of comfort 
and relaxation which made an irresistible appeal. 
No ancestors frowned down from their faded 
frames, but every inch of the walls was covered with 
a valuable and delightful collection of colored 
prints, corner cupboards filled with old Chelsea and 
Spode, and gleaming Colonial cabinets behind the 
glass doors of which stood lines of first editions. 
The polished floor was covered with the hooked, 
rugs of old New England, their quaint and curious 
designs in rich colors now dulled by time and use, 
and every one of the numerous chairs held out stiff 
though hospitable arms. Llandmade fire screens 
worked with beads, illustrating Biblical scenes or 


30 


THE BLUE ROOM 


representing coats of arms, gave warmth and a 
little fustiness to various corners, and the mantel- 
shelf was crowded with delightfully ugly china 
figures in Sunday attitudes, early Victorian orna- 
ments with long glass tears, and inimitable old snuff 
boxes which reeked with history. The whole room 
cried aloud for crinolines and round bare shoulders, 
satin beflowered waistcoats, knee-breeches, and the 
aroma of rose-leaves and hot toddy. 

At that pathetic time of life when meals take on 
supreme importance as landmarks in a long unoc- 
cupied day the Mortimers had dined well. A bottle 
of Veuve Cliquot ’06 had given the required fillip 
to send them through an evening without the stimu- 
lation of guests. There was also the excitement to 
Mortimer of reading aloud his carefully written 
autobiography and to Mrs. Mortimer of listening to 
a probably biased account of a life in which her 
particular part had begun and ended with a honey- 
moon. She looked forward with interest and 
amusement not only to the references to herself 
which must certainly come into it but to the way in 
which Barclay had smoothed over some of the 
rather doubtful episodes of his one-eyed and amo- 
rous career. 

“ Sit here, Madame,” said Mortimer, arranging 
a nest of cushions at the head of a mahogany framed 
sofa. “ I shall need the reading lamp but I will 
tilt the shade so that the light may not tease your 
eyes.” He handed her to her place, arranged her 
skirt about her feet, put a cigarette into her long 


THE BLUE ROOM 


31 


black holder and gave her a light. He did it all 
with his usual mixture of courtesy and tenderness 
and with the air, which gave Mrs. Mortimer agonies 
of repressed amusement, of waiting upon someone 
old enough to be his mother. 

“ I don’t need these glasses,” he said, putting 
them on, “ but the light is faulty and my handwrit- 
ing a little careless.” He made the apology more 
to himself than to his wife. He regarded this aid 
to failing sight with considerable distaste. Then 
he mounted a carefully chosen cigar in a meer- 
schaum holder, pushed a chair a little nearer to the 
reading lamp, and seated himself with his manuscript 
on his knees. Anno Domini must have chuckled to 
see him, in his rather too tight dinner jacket and 
all the camouflage of Denham’s numerous bottles. 
He might have looked older but he certainly would 
have been a less unreal figure with white hair and 
mustache. As it was he bore a striking resem- 
blance to one of those wax figures of dead celebrities 
before which one pauses for a moment with a queer 
self-consciousness as though fearing to intrude. 

“ It ’s the custom of the male members of your 
family to write the story of their lives for the pri- 
vate use of their children, I believe?” asked Mrs. 
Mortimer. 

“Yes, and not a bad idea either. It insures in- 
accuracy and makes us quite certain of the admira- 
tion of those who follow us. I ’m afraid mine 
won’t make such inspiring reading as the rest, 
though.” His gleeful chuckle contradicted the note 


32 THE BLUE ROOM 

of contrition that he put into his voice. “ Bill will 
enjoy it. I’m sure of that, — and so will you, I 
hope.” 

“ Does n’t that rather depend on what you ’ve 
written about me ? ” 

Mortimer gave her a little bow. “ I could write 
nothing about you that had n’t in it the deepest ad- 
miration and respect, Madame.” 

“ Well, I ’m most comfortable and most curious. 
Please begin.” 

Like a professional pianist, hired for a tea fight, 
who, after trying the instrument, places her hand- 
kerchief and proceeds to take off her bracelets, 
Mortimer looked up from the first page. “You 
must understand,” he said, “ that the rather pedantic 
style is in keeping with other such documents and 
it is written in the third person according to prece- 
dent.” 

“ Delightful.” 

He touched the shade, drew an ash tray nearer, 
put his fingers to his tie, and cleared his throat. He 
was about to have a most enjoyable evening. 
“ 4 Barclay Mortimer the third,’ ” he began, “ * was 
born to William and Maria Coveney Mortimer at 
two o’clock in the morning of the 27 of October 
18 — ’ ” the rest he swallowed. It left a nasty taste. 
“ ‘ A bright and remarkably attractive child, he not 
only received the finest education that his country 
could give but all the good influences of a home 
dominated by noble and God-fearing parents ! ’ ” 
He turned over a dozen pages and shot out a smile. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


33 


“ I ’ll spare you all the details of my life and exploits 
at a preparatory school and Yale, — very enthrall- 
ing, and come to the time when I began to count.” 

Mrs. Mortimer nodded. That meant her en- 
trance into the story. N 

“ ‘ At the age of twenty-four, he found himself, 
upon the lamented death of his father, in possession 
of the ancestral house in Westchester, a stable full 
of horses, four old road coaches which had fre- 
quently rumbled over the English* macadam of Pic- 
cadilly and Trafalgar Square on the way to 
Brighton and to Dover, the fine acres of park and 
farmland over which at various times many of the 
celebrated characters of American history had gal- 
loped, and a very considerable fortune. A wealthy, 
high-spirited and uncommonly handsome young 
man, determined to wring out of life everything 
that it had to give, young Mortimer immediately 
followed the example of those whose name he bore 
by making an early marriage.’ ” 

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Mortimer, her mind running 
back to that distant year when she had looked and 
felt as Martha Wainwright did to-day. It was like 
the echo of a dream. 

“ * His beloved mother, the reluctant dowager, re- 
tired to the smaller house on the southwest edge 
of the estate and brought forward the beautiful Ly- 
lyth Pellew, whose family, Anglo-Saxon like that of 
the Mortimers, had settled about the same period in 
the adjoining state of Connecticut.’ ” 

A murmur came from the sofa. “ Poor little 


34 


THE BLUE ROOM 


soul, with long legs and long ringlets, a broken ro- 
mance, and less knowledge of men and life than a 
newly fledged bird.” 

His deaf ear was towards his wife and so Morti- 
mer missed these words. “ The next few sentences 
I submit to your revision if you consider it neces- 
sary,” he said, “ but I will read them as written.” 

Mrs. Mortimer waved her hand. She had for- 
gotten the name of the boy who had not returned 
her love and which like a worm in the bud had eaten 
her damask cheek. She had also forgotten the 
exact quotation, but she remembered the spirit in 
which she had submitted, with the docility of her 
time, to be “ brought forward.” 

“‘Having no one else in his mind, and being 
anxious to conform to the established rule, young 
Mortimer quickly led this very suitable young lady 
to the altar; whereupon, having performed their 
respective duties by the family after a most discon- 
certing honeymoon under the roof of the old house 
and the eyes of numerous ancestors, the young 
couple felt the need of a change of scene. Mrs. 
Mortimer went to New York to stay with relatives 
in Washington Square and Barclay took it into his 
head to visit his connections in England and hunt 
with the Quorn and the Bicester . . . .’ May I 
leave it like that ? ” 

“ How else ? It seems to me to be a masterpiece 
of tactfulness, a gem of the art of elimination.” 
But into the mind of the white-haired lady crowded 
memories of a distressingly unsophisticated girl, a 


THE BLUE ROOM 


35 


man of urgent desires, and a locked door, after 
an outburst of revolt. . . . How good had been 
the independence and the freedom of that metro- 
politan house and the kindness of those dear gay 
people who had introduced her to the life of New 
York. 

“ ‘ Then occurred the first of those affairs of the 
heart which this brief narrative must regretfully 
contain,’ ” read the Commodore, smiling broadly at 
the recollection of the amusement he had derived 
from throwing in the word regretfully. “ ‘ Young 
Mortimer met and fell madly in love with Diana 
Conclarty, daughter of the Earl of Portrush, and 
for a time, it must be said, forgot the beautiful ties 
of home under the emotion of an episode to which 
only the flaming pen of a great poet could do justice 
or the weighty diatribes of a great judge sufficiently 
condemn ’ . . ✓ . That ’s pretty well put, I flatter 
myself,” he added, looking up. 

Mrs. Mortimer laughed. “ Brilliant,” she said. 
“And so Diana Conclarty was the first, was she? 
Tell me about her.” 

“ Red hair, a skin like cream, the spirit of an un- 
broken colt, the physical daring of a man, the tem- 
per of the devil and moments of angelic clemency. 
Hey, what a life she led me, — that girl! She 
caught me when I was just trying my wings and 
left me an experienced flyer. The last time I saw 
her she was in Red Cross uniform and the pride and 
grief of having given three sons to the great sacri- 
fice was stamped upon her face.” He raised his 


36 THE BLUE ROOM 

hand to his forehead in salute and swallowed a 
lump that came into his throat. Like all supremely 
selfish men he could easily afford to indulge in 
theoretical kindness and sentiment. 

“ Poor brave soul,” said Mrs. Mortimer, with her 
eyes on a framed photograph of Bill. 

“ ‘ Young Barclay’s return to Westchester was 
due to an impending event of supreme importance 
to the future of his family. He arrived in time to 
pace the wide veranda of the old house to wait with 
strange feelings for the appearance of the doctor to 
murmur into his ear one or other of the two words 
“boy ” or “ girl.” 

“ It was ‘ boy said Mrs. Mortimer, throwing 
a kiss to the tall figure in khaki. 

“ Yes, thank God, it was ‘ boy ’, and thank God 
again that that boy is on his way to us now. . . . 

‘ It goes without saying that the proud and happy 
father stayed long enough in the place of his own 
birth to add his decorative and debonair figure to 
the little procession that eventually wound its way 
to the old Episcopalian Church in the village to the 
christening ceremony of his son and heir.’ ” 

Mrs. Mortimer pressed her handkerchief sur- 
reptitiously to her eyes. But the Commodore had 
labored to awaken this emotion and paused delib- 
erately, very much gratified. Mrs. Mortimer saw 
all this and laughed away her tears. “ Forgive the 
interruption, Barclay,” she said. 

“ Not at all, Madame. I am so glad to help you 
to a pleasant evening. ‘ After which/ ” he went on, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


37 


with more gusto than ever, “ ‘ a friendly discussion 
was held between the husband and the wife, who had 
by this time achieved considerable poise and a very 
direct vocabulary from the broadening influences 
of New York, and Barclay Mortimer took flight 
once more, this time to France, which became the 
scene of his second great passion.’ ” 

“ What resilience, my dear Barclay ! ” 

“ 4 The dark-haired Bolaire, the young come- 
dienne who drew all Paris to the Varietes to see her 
in “La Femme du Monsieur Boc”, held him until 
she saw her way to permanency and the solid bour- 
geoisism for which her soul had always pined by 
marrying the proprietor of the Hotel du Chariot 
d’or at Boulogne.’ ” 

“ H’m, how curious.” 

“ No, she came from Brittany. Thrift and cau- 
tion were in her blood. . . . ‘ Whereupon, the 
temporarily wounded and disillusioned Barclay re- 
turned once more to Westchester, filled with an 
overwhelming desire to put young Bill upon a pony^t. 
and take a hand in teaching him the ways of a 
gentleman. It may be added that he hoped at the 
same time to gain comfort and consolation at the 
hands of his wife and plant something more fruit- 
ful in the earth than wild oats. He found that, 
during this absence of several years, Mrs. Morti- 
mer had developed into one of the personalities of 
New York and was the undisputed leader of the 
most exclusive set in the City, a vivid and beautiful 
young woman whose doings and sayings were 


38 


THE BLUE ROOM 


chronicled in the newspapers and whose house in 
Fifth Avenue was the center of attraction/ ” 

“ Thank you, Barclay. I could n’t have written 
that better myself.” 

“ Yes, but wait a minute. Here follows a para- 
graph which you may wish to take out and of course 
I shall bow to your decision.” 

“ What is it?” 

He read again. “ ‘ He was, however, somewhat 
piqued to find that she had not been altogether in- 
consolable at his long and selfish absence and had, 
indeed, established an interest which made life very 
desirable and helped her to pass her grass-widow- 
hood without bitterness/ . . . Shall that stand ? ” 

“ Word for word, my dear Barclay. It ’s per- 
fectly delicious.” 

“ ‘ The death of his mother at this period of his 
life/ ” he went on, “ ‘ held Mortimer to America 
longer than he desired to remain. He was how- 
ever bound to confess that the sight of his boy, the 
very spit of himself, touched him on that side of 
his nature which circumstances had not permitted 
him to develop. It was then that the seeds were 
sown of the deep affection which ever afterwards 
existed between father and son. For the first time 
the Mortimers made several appearances together 
in society to everybody’s surprise, agreed again to 
differ on nearly every subject which came up for 
discussion and separated once more. This time 
Mortimer spread his wings for Italy. . . / ” 

“ Italy, — ah yes. The Villa Fiora. Someone 


THE BLUE ROOM 39 

sent Bill a series of very pretty water-color sketches 
of what seemed to be a most romantic spot.” 

There came a deep sigh followed by a reminiscent 
laugh. “ ‘ Here he very quickly found himself in 
the midst of an intrigue which lasted longer than any 
of the others. The discretion which had to be ex- 
ercised with this dear lady taught him most of the 
rules of diplomacy which afterwards stood him in 
such good stead. Eventually the little affair was 
discovered, there was a fracas, Mortimer was flung 
from a balcony, and as soon as his broken arm was 
mended, took up his residence in London/ ” 

“ Was she worth a broken arm? ” 

Mortimer nodded and closed his eyes for a mo- 
ment. “ She was worth breaking everything for, 
including the Commandments. A rare and noble 
character, Lylyth, with a deep streak of piety.” 

“ Piety!” 

“ Paradoxically enough perhaps, yes, — though 
I ought to say that she kept it well in the back- 
ground. As beautiful as her sunny country, she 
died of a broken heart and an attack of pleurisy. 
God rest her sweet soul ! ” 

“ She certainly had a nice taste for drawing,” 
said Mrs. Mortimer, in a perfectly even voice. 

“ We missed the sketches very much.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mortimer, who felt that these 
pictures would never have been painted had he not 
been the Paolo to this Francesca. “And now I 
think that a little light refreshment has been earned 
by us both and we will raise our glasses in silent 


40 


THE BLUE ROOM 


tribute to the past that we have unearthed to-night. 
How true it is that nothing gives to people of ripe 
age such exquisite pleasure as to gloat over the 
misdeeds of their youth ! ” 

He rose and made a graceful line for the tray 
which Albery had placed upon an octagonal table. 

And as Mrs. Mortimer watched this man of 
transparent egotism who took such an artistic pleas- 
ure in placing himself in the spotlight, she told her- 
self that she regretted less than ever having been 
“ brought forward ” all those years ago, because 
Bill was her compensation, — Bill who was at that 
moment aboard the ship that was heading for home, 
— and Martha Wainwright. History repeats itself 
and this girl also would presently be brought for- 
ward, but not as Mrs. Mortimer had been. Love 
would make the story a very different one. 

With marvelously steady hands Mortimer 
brought back two liqueur glasses of green Char- 
treuse and his wife joined him in drinking to many 
youthful misdeeds which provided her too with 
precious memories. 

VII 

After which, with a lubricated throat, the old 
man continued to enjoy himself. 

“ ‘ Mortimer then commenced to develop the 
sporting instinct of his many-sided character. He 
had the leisure to do so because he was for the mo- 
ment free of women. He became a famous 
swordsman, a distinguished whip, a well-known 


THE BLUE ROOM 41 

polo-player and the owner of a yacht which in those 
days was called palatial by the little scribblers of 
society chit-chat. He owned and sometimes drove 
the road coach which left London every day for 
Guilford and bought a house in Mayfair to which 
the young aristocracy of England came at all times. 
He was ami intime in the most exclusive circles and 
his colors were frequently to be seen in the races for 
which he entered his horses. Then came the great 
scandal of 1899 . . . ’ ” 

“ 1 was looking forward to that,” said Mrs. 
Mortimer. “ It seemed to be a little overdue.” 

She was thanked by a roguish glance. 

When Colonel Alistair McDuff brought his in- 
famous action for divorce against Lady Doreen and 
cited Barclay Mortimer as co-respondent. It occu- 
pied the attention of the courts when the London 
season was at its height. The case was tried before 
Mr. Justice Dearborn, the most advertised counsel 
took it in hand and the names of the witnesses made 
a list which would have been epoch-making even 
when attached to a charity performance under the 
patronage of Royalty. Lady Doreen put up a most 
courageous and witty defense. Her cross-exami- 
nation, during which she lashed the prosecuting 
counsel with her well-known sarcasm, sent London 
into fits of laughter. Mortimer also, of course, 
denied the soft impeachment and being at that time 
in the very prime of his looks was the object of 
much admiration. He worked off one or two epi- 
grammatic remarks which delighted the cynics and 


42 


THE BLUE ROOM 


the intellectuals and caused the Victorians to shiver 
in their side-spring boots. But his record as a heart 
breaker was ranged against him and the evidence 
was too strong to refute. The verdict was in 
favor of the Colonel who obtained a decree nisi 
with the custody of the child. Lady Doreen, whose 
position had hitherto been absolutely secure, sank 
down to that indescribable set in semi-society which 
included all the doubtfuls and the also-rans, while 
Mortimer with his faithful Denham found it ad- 
visable to dig up his European roots and return to 
his native land.’ ” 

“To my intense regret I missed all that,” said 
Mrs. Mortimer. “ The New York papers con- 
tented themselves with only the briefest accounts.” 

“ Luckily I have the full reports in one of my 
scrap-books. I will show them to you.” 

“ Please do. I find the new novels very anae- 
mic.” 

Mortimer was flattered, bowed his acknowledg- 
ments and returned to his pages. “ * By that time 
Bill was a strapping lad of fifteen, who had inher- 
ited much of his father’s good looks and manners. 
He was the ringleader of all the trouble at Hotch- 
kiss. Mrs. Mortimer, at the zenith of her loveli- 
ness, continued to conduct herself with such skill 
and discretion that her numerous intrigues entirely 
escaped discussion.’ ” 

“I object to the word ‘numerous,’ Barclay! 
Oblige me by making it ‘ occasional.’ ” 

“ With pleasure,” He did so. “ ‘ During the 


THE BLUE ROOM 43 

period that followed Mortimer was in New York 
when Mrs. Mortimer was in the country and in the 
country when Mrs. Mortimer was in New York. 
They met from time to time, of course, and having 
so amicably agreed to differ on every conceivable 
subject that quarreling was out of the question, be- 
came excellent friends. It was arranged that Bill 
should spend the summer holidays with his father 
and the winter holidays with his mother. The 
yacht, the Iolanthe, was brought into American wa- 
ters and father and son enjoyed many cruises to- 
gether. It was during this year that Barclay Morti- 
mer revived the interest in coaching and to the joy 
of democracy frequently tooled a spanking team of 
bays up Fifth Avenue in the middle of the after- 
noon. With Bill seated at his side with a small edi- 
tion of his father’s white tall hat cocked over his 
right eye they made a noticeable picture.’ ” 

“ And a way went the last shreds of my maternal 
influence,” said Mrs. Mortimer. 

And Bill became a gentleman under mine,” said 
his father proudly. “ ‘ The backwash of the Lon- 
don scandal followed Mortimer to New York, and 
as the scrupulous families failed to include him in 
their invitations, he became a patron of the drama. 

It was generally said that the magnet which drew 
him nightly to the stage box of Wallack’s Theatre 
was a blond small person who called herself Lorna 
Doone. Be that as it may, this return to the thrall- 
dom of femininity did nothing to disturb the beauti- 
ful friendship which had sprung up between Morti- 


44 THE BLUE ROOM 

mer and his son, and to the credit of the older man 
it must be said that he endeavored very earnestly 
to inculcate into his son the principle of “ Do what 
I say but for God’s sake don’t do what I do.” 

“ Which did nothing but appeal irresistibly to my 
poor dear Bill’s terribly keen sense of humor,” put 
in Mrs. Mortimer, now well into her fourth ciga- 
rette. 

“ Too true,” said Mortimer, with a chuckle. 

“ ‘ Then followed a time during which Mortimer, 
having discovered Europe, became the new Colum- 
bus of America. He spent one winter in Flor- 
ida aboard the Iolanthe, and revelled in the gor- 
geous beauty of its golden sunsets and sunrises, 
with Lorna Doone. He was carried away with en- 
thusiasm for California where he wandered among 
the old Missions — with Lorna Doone. Colorado 
left him speechless and he was greatly fascinated 
with Hawaii where — with Lorna Doone — the pe- 
culiar sadness of the native music always turned his 
thoughts to Bill, around whom he began building 
up many pet ambitions. It was perhaps a sign of 
middle age that he found himSelf dwelling on the 
future of his only son with a growing desire that he 
should take the name of Mortimer back into useful- 
ness and carry on the tradition of his ancestors in a 
manner which he himself had failed to do, and his 
letters to Bill on his sentimental journey through his 
hitherto unexplored native land were perfect mas- 
terpieces of parental excellence. . . 

“Which,” interrupted Mrs. Mortimer again, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


45 


“ when read to his Fidus Achates awoke Homeric 
laughter.” She could n’t resist the temptation to 
work in this sentence in the sort of language so dear 
and so easy to the old buck. 

“ How sad! . . . 4 In 1902 he escorted Bill to 

Yale, spent one emotional evening among the mem- 
ories of his own student days, endeavored to instill 
into the mind of his son the lofty ambitions which 
had inspired the boy’s grandfather and great-grand- 
father, and before sailing for Europe settled a nice 
little pension upon his most recent companion whose 
new first night he witnessed in New York. There 
he had the satisfaction of seeing Charles Frohman 
“ present ” Miss Lorna Doone in a play called 
“ Goodbye Forever.” ’ ” 

“ How appropriate ! ” said Mrs. Mortimer. 

“ I saw to that, Madame. ... ‘ Then followed 

several years during which this incorrigible philan- 
derer devoted himself almost wholly to racing. 
He established himself at Epsom, formed a stable 
expertly selected from the best brood mares of the 
time and had the satisfaction of winning the Grand 
National in 1904 with Lysistrata and the Derby with 
Tacitus. It was at his father’s Queen Anne house 
at the edge of the Downs that Bill made his debut 
as a gentleman rider and as a man of sentiment. 
The trainer’s daughter, Lilly Hastings . . * ” 

“ Lilly Hastings ! So she was the first ! ” 

was very fair with great blue eyes 
and a mouth like a rosebud, and the charming idyl 
that was enacted in and around that old Surrey 


46 


THE BLUE ROOM 

place, which had belonged to one of the partners 
in Coutts’s bank, proved to Mortimer finally, though 
reluctantly, that his son was a true chip of the old 
block. The boy was instantly sent back to Yale, 
and the admonition that he took with him would 
have done credit to the elder Chesterfield. Hope 
springs eternal in the human breast, however, and 
Mortimer, not yet old Mortimer by any means, 
started again that series of letters to his boy which 
unfortunately the world will never see, but which, 
if they had been published in volume form, must 
have become the text book for the guidance of 
youth. They were filled with wisdom and sanity, 
kindliness and fine thoughts.’ ” 

“ You don’t exaggerate, Barclay. Bill showed 
me some of them. They were masterpieces of style 
and sentiment. One of them almost spoilt a little 
affair that I was about to undertake, — it was so 
filled with religious fervor.” 

“ You ’re very generous, my dear Lylyth. And 
I am all the more happy to ask you to listen to the 
following tribute. ‘ Mrs. Mortimer, now in her 
forty-second year, came out of a rest cure in time 
to be present in the royal enclosure at Epsom to see 
her husband lead in Tacitus. The drama of that 
great moment, when Mortimer carried off the blue 
ribbon of racing, was enhanced by the sight of his 
wife, slim and sweet and looking not a day over 
thirty, with the six foot Bill at her side. Morti- 
mer would have fallen in love with her but for the 
fact that among the party of friends who had come 


THE BLUE ROOM 


47 


over with her to London was young Alton Gram- 
ercy, who seemed to have the right to carry his wife’s 
vanity bag. Nevertheless, Old Court was thrown 
open to Mrs. Mortimer and her friends, and Bill 
renewed his riding. Sadly enough Lilly Hastings 
had become Mrs. Simpkins with several young 
Simpkinses, but Bill’s roving eyes were consoled by 
the flower-faced daughter of a near-by squire, and 
Mortimer began to see that his favorite dream was 
less and less likely to be realized. Bill was evi- 
dently not going to be added to the family list of 
great national characters.’ *’ 

“ We ’ll see about that,” said Mrs. Mortimer 
to herself. 

“ ‘ Only once between that time and 1914 did any- 
thing unusual break the delightful equability of the 
life of Barclay Mortimer. In the autumn of 1909, 
by which time Barclay was fifty years of age, the 
hand of fate, which had so constantly left him alone, 
was stretched his way, and just to show that, after 
all, there is little favoritism in the world, it caught 
our good friend by the scruff of the neck and flung 
him on to the small of his back. Appendicitis was 
the cause of it. An immediate operation was nec- 
essary, and for some days Mortimer trembled on 
the verge of death. At that time he was living in 
a very beautiful house in the Avenue Wagram, 
Paris. Bill was in London, having taken over his 
father’s racing stable, and Mrs. Mortimer was in 
Italy pursuing the curious policy of standing in the 
footprints of saints,’ ” 


48 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Not at all curious. I was just at the age when 
sinners begin to repent because sinning has passed 
them by ! ” 

Mortimer laughed and sighed and continued. 
“ 4 Telegrams were sent to them and they rushed 
to the bedside of one who had hitherto escaped all 
the ordinary forms of punishment which humanity 
generally gets when it asks for it and sometimes 
when it does n’t. While the angel of death hovered 
over that house, quietly and indifferently waiting 
for orders, the mother and son watched at the bed- 
side, — Bill, who adored his father and treated him 
more like a boon companion than a parent, with the 
first prayer in his heart that had been there for 
many and many a year, and Lylyth, still beautiful 
and still fighting Anno Domini with every conceiv- 
able trick that is known to beauty doctors, with a 
certain small thrill of emotion which came to her at 
the sight of the man on his back who had always 
stood so triumphantly on his feet.’ ” 

He was obliged to stop for a moment. The 
tragedy and pathos of all this moved him almost to 
tears. Also he was a little puffed. 

During the little pause, not unwelcome, the white- 
haired lady sent her thoughts back to that absurd 
bedroom with its painted furniture and cupid cov- 
ered ceiling and the terror-stricken man with several 
days’ growth of red and gray beard on his usually 
spotless chin, who was so fearful of death. 

“ ‘ The natural resilience which had carried 
Mortimer through all his adventures came to his 


THE BLUE ROOM 


49 


rescue once more. He did death out of a new vic- 
tim, made a wonderful recovery, tightened the 
bonds which existed between himself and his son 
by several weeks of the closest intercourse and dis- 
covered many charming characteristics in his wife 
which he had not taken the trouble hitherto to find 
out. They were good weeks, those in that Paris 
house, and anyone seeing those three together as 
they drove out on fine evenings to dine at the Casino 
at Enghien would have imagined that the greatest 
devotion existed between them. Mortimer would 
have been very happy to have continued this rela- 
tionship into the future and have become domestic 
for the first time in his life.’ ” 

“I wonder ! ” 

“ Yes, yes, it ’s true, Madame, on my oath. . . . 

‘ He was even filled with a warm desire to dig up his 
European roots permanently and return with his 
wife to the old house in Westchester, but when he 
broached the subject to her and was told with a 
charming smile that there was another inter- 
est 

“ The last, the very, very last ! ” 

“ . . . he bowed and laughed and said au re- 
voir, escorted her to the train-de-luxe which left for 
Italy that night and went back with Bill to the old 
Surrey house on the edge of the Epsom Downs. 
Together they continued to race until the great black 
cloud, about which Lord Roberts had so persistently 
and so urgently warned the British Government, 
finally burst on the fourth of August 1914/ ” 


50 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Ah, you Ve come to that awful day! ” 

“Just as that awful day will forever come back 
to us, my dear. ‘ It was too much for Barclay 
Mortimer to see his old friends the French and the 
British on the edge of complete ruin without lend- 
ing a hand. Instantly, therefore, he established an 
ambulance unit and devoted his wealth and personal 
energies to its efficiency. Bill, imbued with the 
same spirit, collected his mother, took her to Lon- 
don, got into the stampede of Americans who were 
anxious to get back, . . ” 

“ Shall I ever forget that melee, that football 
scrum ! ” 

“ ‘ eventually caught a boat, and being aware of 
the fact that the United States would not be able to 
stand aloof from the European cataclysm whatever 
her present views might be, joined that body of ex- 
cellent and far-seeing Americans who made the 
word Plattsburg stand out in golden letters in the 
history of the United States. Thus, when the hour 
came for the Stars and Stripes to take its place 
among the banners of the Allies, Bill and his friends 
were among the first to be commissioned into that 
great army which poured in long brown streams into 
the pock-marked fields of France and turned the 
scales against Germany.’ ” 

“ My own dear Bill ! ” 

“ ‘ He sailed in 1917 and served with conspicuous 
ability and devotion to duty until November 1918, 
when, unfortunately, the reins were taken out of the 
hands of fighting men and controlled once more by 


THE BLUE ROOM 


51 


those very politicians whose lack of vision and pro- 
fessional selfishness had permitted the black cloud 
to grow and give the knockout blow to civilization. 
He remained with the army of occupation, watching 
with the deepest disgust all the pettifogging parish 
pumpism which interfered with the triumph 'of the 
Allied arms, took the sword out of the hands of 
Foch and very nearly undermined the superb sac- 
rifice of fighting men by the attempt to establish a 
League of Nations before peace had been forced 
upon Germany. Fretting his soul out on the b^nks 
of the Rhine he watched with amazement and cha- 
grin the substitution of self-filling pens for machine 
guns, and listened to the cackling of foolish crea- 
tures blown out like toads with vanity, for several 
weary months.’ ” 

“ And the wonder of it was,” broke in Mrs. 
Mortimer, on whom every reference to Bill in this 
curious document acted electrically, “that his let- 
ters from Coblenz did n’t get him court-martialed.” 

“ Probably the censor was his friend, Madame. 
And now for the pages that bring us up to the pres- 
ent moment. You’re not fatigued, or bored, I 
trust?” 

“ No, no. It is all intensely interesting to me. 
Please go on.” 

“ Very well then. ... ‘ In the meantime his 
father, after five years of strenuous work, during 
which time he had poured his money and his spirit 
into his ambulances, said good-by to poor broken 
France, made his way once more across those 


52 


THE BLUE ROOM 


three thousand miles of water which no longer di- 
vided America from her sister countries and took 
up his residence permanently under the roof of his 
ancestors. Here he was joined by the lady whose 
hair had gone white beneath the uniform cap of a 
Red Cross nurse, which she had worn from that 
terrible hour when those gray hordes ran amuck 
through Belgium and only removed when the news 
of a false peace burst upon a tired world and set all 
the bells ringing for something about which there 
was very little to rejoice. There was something 
not a little whimsical in the reunion at last of the 
Old Rip and the woman who had really never been 
his wife, both of whom had lived up to their tradi- 
tion under the stress of a huge and beautiful sym- 
pathy for the people who had shown them friend- 
ship and for the countries in which they had en- 
joyed so much happiness. . . .’ Do you like the 
word ‘ whimsical’ there, Madame?” 

“ Oh yes, I think so. It would n’t be quite true 
to write 'pathetic’, would it? — although it might 
look better to Bill’s children, perhaps. Think it 
over some day.” 

“ I will,” said Mortimer. He read again. 
“ ‘ They joined forces finally when both were driven 
into the realization that they were to be laid on the 
shelf and wait with becoming patience for that in- 
evitable hour when death should beckon to them 
and they would be obliged to follow. It goes with- 
out saying that they met under the old family roof 
with much mutual respect. In the affair of the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


53 


war, at any rate, they had playad the game, forgot- 
ten self, laid their little indulgences aside. They 
saw themselves, luckily, with a certain sense of hu- 
mor, war-worn and time-worn, and like thorough- 
bred horses no longer able to join the hunt. They 
looked at each other from adjoining boxes with eyes 
full of pleasant reminiscence, unregretful, uncom- 
plaining, satisfied with having had a devilish good 
time and very ready to make each other’s acquaint- 
ance, mutually aware of the fact that they had, 
however, proved themselves worthy of becoming 
acquainted. Passion had gone out of their lives, the 
desire to compete with the younger people had 
fallen like autumn leaves. The world was no 
longer with them. They had become bystanders, 
lookers on, critics, not warped and not without 
sympathy for the others who followed in their foot- 
steps and occupied their places. The spirit of ad- 
venture which had pervaded both of them had left 
them, and they came together at last with an en- 
forced sexlessness which neither of them regretted. 
They were in every sense of the word companions, 
made more companionable from the fact that with 
the frankness of friends they could compare notes 
as to their indiscretions, and make plans for the 
happiness and comfort of their only son, for whom 
they had reserved the best of all their love.’ ” 

He read these last words with a voice broken with 
very genuine emotion, rose, removed his glasses 
which were befogged with tears, bent over the white- 
haired lady who had never permitted the suspicion 


54 


THE BLUE ROOM 


of scandal to be attached to her name, never once 
attempted to interfere with his philandering or to 
disturb the precious friendship which had always 
existed between himself and Bill, and raised her 
hand deferentially to his lips. 

“ Madame,” he said, “ out of all this one fact 
emerges like a monument.” 

“ And what is that, Barclay ? ” 

“ Your sportsmanship, my dear.” 

VIII 

It was not late, but the hour had come for bed. 
Mrs. Mortimer always read for an hour before go- 
ing to sleep, and the Old Buck placed himself in the 
hands of Denham for an anti-rheumatic treatment 
before a final disappearance for the day. 

While he gathered up the pages written with that 
characteristic mixture of freely acknowledged ego- 
tism and persistent satire which he had carried with 
him always and still clung to as an aid to his bluff 
of middle-age, Mrs. Mortimer went over to one of 
the windows and pushed it open. 

The reading of this scenario of her husband’s life 
had set all her memories on the wing like a flight 
of newly released pigeons. Old half-forgotten 
scents and scenes and faces, words and places and 
names had been brought back to her vividly. Men 
who had once been all-important to her happiness 
had stood before her again in all the pride and glory 
of love and youth. Far-away incidents in her long 
leadership of society, triumphant and envied, had 


THE BLUE ROOM 


55 


added a beat to her pulse and a touch of color to 
her cheeks. It had been an exciting evening, a 
moving picture of people and feelings now lying in 
the limbo of an unreturnable past. But the image 
which remained most clearly in her mind was the 
one of herself, so like Martha Wainwright as to be 
almost uncanny, being brought forward, — the 
words stuck, — to become the wife of Barclay 
Mortimer, the mistress of his house and the mother 
of his son. And as she looked out at the dark 
woods which hid the solid and scrupulous Wain- 
wright home from her sight she asked herself, for 
the first time with a sudden twinge of conscience, 
if, after all, there was not something very cruel and 
almost criminal in her plan deliberately and in cold 
blood to place this good little girl in a position in 
which her story might be repeated, in spite of the 
fact that Martha would walk to the sacrifice with 
love in her heart. Here was Bill, “ a very naughty 
boy,” older by many years than this unsophisticated 
child. He would bring to the partnership, if the 
scheme succeeded, no idealism, nothing of first love, 
not one atom of freshness. The husks of many 
affairs with women would hang about him, and as 
he had inherited much of the susceptibility of his 
father, there was no guarantee that his domestic fe- 
licity, so called, would not be forgotten at the sight 
of any pretty face. Here was this worldly house to 
which Martha would be brought, utterly devoid of 
the environment of duty and the example of honesty 
which pervaded her own home, and here would be the 


56 THE BLUE ROOM 

Old Rip and his nominal wife conducting a comic- 
pathetic companionship which must be a constant 
puzzle to a girl whose own father and mother were 
on very different terms. It would be like trans- 
planting a wild rose to a hot-house, or binding a 
hymn-book in the covers of Boccaccio. ... With 
the thought of what she herself might have been if 
she had married the man of her undiscovered love, 
the white-haired lady, stirred by the reading of this 
unmoral history, began to ask herself whether it 
was fair and permissible to shape things in such a 
way that this dear sweet girl might repeat the story 
that she had just listened to, and having given a nec- 
essary heir to the family, go off on a similar series 
of tangents as soon as the inevitable disillusion set 
in. And it would set in, she feared, because, being 
human, Martha would soon discover the existence 
of a Blue Room in Bill’s life and would find it the 
one room of all into which she would be most eager 
to peer. 

Lingering at the window and looking out at the 
dark quiet woods behind which stood the house 
which Jonathan Wainwright had built by the sweat 
of his brow Mrs. Mortimer pictured Martha asleep 
in her virginal room dreaming of her hero who was 
blameless and without reproach, and waiting with 
a fluttering heart for his return, hope seeing a star 
and listening love hearing the rustling of a wing. 
But when she turned back into the room and saw 
Bill’s face in the photograph and his careless at- 
tractive eyes fixed upon her with something in them 


THE BLUE ROOM 


57 


which she interpreted as a longing to settle down, 
she threw aside her scruples and her unselfish sym- 
pathy. “ I have found a little wife for you, my 
darling boy,” she said to herself. “ Come home 
and build your nest.” 






























































































V 

m 








































































































® h 




































































































































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PART II 


I 

Having shaken hands with the hall-porter and 
the elevator man and said cheery things to both, 
Bill Mortimer stood grinning in the middle of all 
the kit that had been dumped into his sitting room. 
And there he remained for several moments won- 
dering, as he looked about and saw that everything 
was exactly as he left it, even to the pile of letters 
that he had put under a small bronze figure of 
Venus and forgotten to answer, whether the last 
two years in France had ever happened. This com- 
fortable and aloof room, filled with permanent per- 
sonal things, each one of which had its peculiar in- 
terest, made all the quick-changing incidents out of 
which he had had the luck to emerge seem to be part 
of an hallucination. He must have read them all 
as having happened to some other man or dreamed 
about them during a much disturbed night. . . . 
Here, in the same places, with the same air of al- 
ways having been, was everything that spelt Bill 
Mortimer. His books and pictures, golf clubs, polo 
clubs, guns in a glassed-in rack, writing desk all 


60 


THE BLUE ROOM 


untidy as he had left it, huge sofas on the cushions 
of one of which he thought he could still see the 
little dent where the golden head of Birdie Carroll 
had rested a few nights before he sailed ; the framed 
photographs of several charming girls; the Welsh 
dresser with its cut glass decanters and boxes of 
cigars ; the pictures of his race-horses with a collec- 
tion of rosettes pinned to their frames; the piano 
over whose keys the soft fingers of Susan Hatch 
had so often wandered and out of which Jeanne 
Dacoral had drawn the uneasy music of Heller’s 
“ Sleepless Nights ” and the gamin stuff of Paris cab- 
arets; the full length portrait of his father by Shan- 
non and his mother by the young Italian artist who 
had put a bullet through his brain because he could 
not win her lips, — here they all were, as though 
he had gone away a few hours before, stamped with 
his personality, docketed in his mind with dates and 
sensations and sentiments. ... Was it possible 
that he had been away from them all, and all that 
they meant in his life, for two solid years of kaleido- 
scopic events, the blurred impressions of which 
were of indescribable row, of almost comic discom- 
forts, of chaotic movements, and of men’s laughter 
and screams ? . . . 

He stepped over the shabby fat roll of his sleep- 
ing kit, which bulged with boots, went to one of the 
windows and opened it, and heaved a sigh of deep 
content. . . . New York, — with its hum of traf- 
fic rising up from the polished surface of Fifth 
Avenue. The Plaza with all its windows gleaming, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


61 


standing out against the black velvet of the night 
like the giant’s castle of a child’s dream. . . . He 
gazed out at the familiar sight with a curious thrill. 
In the days that were so amazingly remote and 
which seemed like yesterday, he never remembered 
consciously to have noticed this scene, any more 
than he could say that he had been affected by the 
song of the traffic and the characteristic scent of the 
City. It is only after a long absence from a town 
or a wife that the charm of either comes upon a man 
with surprise. 

Then he shook himself and laughed a little and 
turned round to his friend. “ Demobilized, — at 
last,” he said. 

The other man, on whose slight figure even the 
beltless, musical-comedy uniform of the Royal Fly- 
ing Corps looked almost smart, helped himself to a 
stiff whisky. “ In my case, old bean, that ’s not 
the word.” 

“ What is it then?” 

“ Demoralized,” he replied, without cynicism and 
without bitterness, in the same feelingless tone as he 
might have said denationalized. And then, with 
the inimitable indifference of the keenly interested 
Englishman, he started on a tour of the room and 
shot out quiet and pertinent comments as he went. 

“ Tacitus, by Jove! I won a very necessary 
twenty quid on that horse when I was a nipper at 
Eton. A good Derby, that.” 

“ I was there when my old man led him in. I 
shall never forget his face,” said Bill. “ Ever 


62 


THE BLUE ROOM 


imagine the sort of expression a battery major on 
the verge of shell shock would wear on receiving a 
chit appointing him to Headquarters Staff ? ” 

Teddy Jedburgh shot out an appreciative laugh. 
He had seen it — once. The story of the various 
rosettes was read in a glance. Then he passed in 
review the photographs of Bill’s little friends. 
“ Very charming bits of fluff, old thing,” he said. 
“ Hearty congrats.” He paused before the oil 
painting of Barclay Mortimer in hunting kit. 
“ Who ’s the man who ought to have been a 
Duke?” 

“ My father,” said Bill, with very real pride. 

“ No wonder you ’re such a dashed good looking 
sportsman, Bill. And the beautiful lady with eyes 
that would make a saint forget his halo ? ” 

“ My mother,” said Bill. 

Teddy bowed to the canvas. “ Some jokers have 
all the luck. Why did you wire to two such unique 
parents not to meet you in town to-night ? ” 

“ Selfish reasons,” said Bill. “ I wanted to save 
it for the old homestead.” 

“ I see. Quite. . . . Well, you certainly know 
how to do yourself proud, old bean. One could be 
very comfortable here. May I see the rest of your 
bachelor perch ? ” 

With almost boyish pleasure in what he had 
learned to understand was enthusiasm on his 
friend’s part Bill opened a door. “ Dining-room,” 
he said, and led the way through an arch into a 
booklined cubby hole. “ For the education of va- 


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63 


lets. I don’t read. And now come along 
here. . . . My bedroom, with dressing room on 
one side, bathroom on the other. Here ’s your bed- 
room for as long as you like to use it.” 

“Thanks most awfully. And these stairs?” 

“ Up to roof garden.” 

“ Roof garden ! ” 

“Yes. Come up. Mind your head.” 

“ Great Scot,” said Teddy Jedburgh, drawing his 
breath. 

The house was high and its roof was neck and 
shoulders above those of the adjoining buildings. 
Away below, north, east, south and west lay the 
great, ugly, fascinating City, a very Gulliver’s city, 
with its other erections vying in an endeavor to 
stick their flat heads in among the stars. Some 
were dark blots against the sky, some were fairy- 
like and almost transparent with a thousand glisten- 
ing eyes. Alongside the Park, with its intersecting 
roads and belts of trees, the great Avenue ran, alive 
with the head and tail lights of what seemed to be 
fast moving fireflies. An arch across which was 
stretched a necklace of beads stood a little way to the 
right under the steady glare of searchlights. It 
might have been the entrance into the Realm 
of Moving Pictures erected especially for Theda 
Bara. 

“ You may thank all your gods for the Atlantic,” 
said Teddy, at last. “ What an unholy joy the 
Huns would have taken in dropping bombs on 
this!” 


64 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ The Atlantic and the British Tommy,” said 
Bill. “ Yes.” 

He led the way down and back to the sitting 
room, where they found a Jap valet, with a face as 
shiny as his alpaca jacket. All that kit lying about 
meant work and there was a sour glint in his slits 
of eyes. 

“ Shall we feed in or go out somewhere? ” 

“ Is it all the same to you ? ” 

“ Yes, old man.” 

“ Then let ’s go out. The call of this city is in my 
blood. Little old New York, eh? Watch me paint 
it red. But first I ’ll sample your bathroom, if I 
may. I want hot water, and bath salts, and a mat 
soft to the feet, and scented soap, and every other 
little thing like that. After which, having shed 
uniform for evening clothes I ’m out for caviare 
and the bubbly and the horrid music of a Jazz band, 
arid if you can put me in the way of a dear sweet 
thing with a laughing mouth and pacifistic notions, 
I shall ask nothing more. ... I salute you, Civili- 
zation.” He did so as a veteran pays tribute to the 
dead, took off his cap and chucked it to the far end 
of the room. 

Bill grinned again. “ Itoto, fix the bath for Lord 
Edward Jedburgh.” 

Teddy waited until the little oily man had oozed 
his way out. “ Major Jedburgh, if you don’t 
mind,” he said, .with unexpected gravity. “ My 
father has sold all the anchors that held us to a 
country that ’s abqut to be divided up by the La- 


65 


THE BLUE ROOM 

bor Leaders. He and I are nomads, like the rest 
of us. That Lord stuff has been wiped off the face 
of the earth by old man Krupp.” 

II 

Bill chose the Ritz for dinner because there he 
could show Jedburgh the most cosmopolitan mix- 
ture of human various to be found in New York. 
Like the London Savoy it draws people from every 
grade of life, from the astonishing blondes of mov- 
ing picture fame to the elaborate cocottes with the 
manners of grandes dames; from the nice suburban 
people of transparent rectitude who have come in 
for the evening, to the wispy debutantes trying very 
hard to be mistaken for ladies of easy virtue, 
with some success. 

The band was not Jazz, but an orchestra of picked 
musicians, and it played delightfully under the lead- 
ership of a man who used his violin with masterly 
carelessness and gave the impression of being a 
high diplomat who had taken up music as a hobby. 
French, Italian, Belgian and British uniforms were 
to be seen everywhere, by the side of frocks devoid 
of backs, and the atmosphere of the room, which 
struck Jedburgh as being like a great W edgwood bowl 
turned outside in, was exactly what his mood desired. 

The two men did themselves well, but as both of 
them had been up since five o’clock that eventful 
morning and roof gardens were deserts until the 
theaters emptied they left at half past nine and 
walked home along the almost lonely Avenue. 


66 


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Bill let himself in to his apartment, but was held 
up on the threshold by the night elevator man, 
whose effusive greetings were not, and ought not, 
to be cut short. And so Teddy Jedburgh went into 
the sitting room alone. 

His eyes were immediately caught by the living 
representation of a picture that he had cut out of 
Le Petit Parisien and tacked to the wall of his 
quarters. . . . Curled up on the sofa in front of 
the fireplace, her hat was stabbed to one cushion and 
her small fair head was deep into another. Long 
eyelashes made fans upon her cheeks, and between 
her red lips, which were slightly apart like those of 
a sleeping child, a row of very perfect teeth gleamed. 
The fingers of one small hand touched the floor and 
the other, palm upwards, lay in her lap. The fact 
that one shapely leg in a black silk stocking was 
charmingly disclosed made the whole alluring pic- 
ture French. 

The R. A. F. Major, -who had been sent to the 
United States to assist in winding up the work of 
the British Mission, imagined for a moment that 
he was dreaming true, and gazed at the little figure 
incredulously. But when he heard Bilks cheery 
“ good night ” and anticipated the imminent bang- 
ing of the door with the feelings of a man who hates 
sacrilege, he tiptoed back and held up his hand. 

“ Sssh ! ” he whispered, “ we ’re entertaining an 
angel unawares.” 

Bill needn ’t have been surprised, because in the 
old days before the war he had rarely returned to 


THE BLUE ROOM 


67 


his rooms without finding one or other, and some- 
times both, of his latest engrossments waiting for 
him. At the moment he was, however, unprepared 
for a visitor and had forgotten exactly who was 
most likely to have discovered his name in the even- 
ing paper, upon the list of returning officers. Still 
wearing his hat he went forward, treading like a cat 
on hot bricks, with Jedburgh in close attendance, 
and bent over the sofa. 

“ It ’s Susie Hatch,” he said. “ Dear little soul. 
Is n’t it nice of her to look me up like this? ” 

With a twinge of inappropriate jealousy Jed- 
burgh watched him go down on one knee and kiss 
the sleeper on the lips. 

The eyelids lifted, two round blue eyes stared for 
a moment blurred with sleep, a cry of “ Bill ” rang 
through the room and a pair of arms were flung out 
to clasp a willing neck. 

“ Lucky devil,” said Jedburgh, and walked away 
to the cigar boxes. 

“ Just by accident I saw your name and came 
round on the off chance. ... it ’s like the old days, 
Bill. ... oh, my dear! ” 

“ She ’s crying,” said Teddy to himself. “ My 
God, why was n’t I wise enough to tack on to a little 
human thing whose tears would burst for me ? ” 

With the delicacy of a man of tradition upon 
whom even war had not had the whole of its coar- 
sening effect the man whose father had sold his 
landmarks drifted quietly out into the hall and shut 
the door. And there he stood on the cold marble 


68 


THE BLUE ROOM 


facing the elevator shaft with an unlighted cigar 
between his teeth, for an interminable ten minutes, 
— cursing his pre-war aloofness and determining 
once again to make up for lost time now that, more 
by luck than judgment, he had missed the bullet 
upon which his name had been stamped. 

At last the door opened. “ My dear chap,” said 
Bill, ruefully. 

“ Perfectly all right, old thing, perfectly all right. 
Do as you would be done by, eh? How well they 
build these places here.” 

"How well they build some of you fellows over 
there,” said Bill. “ Come in and be introduced.” 

“ I ’d like to.” 

The girl was kneeling on the guard that made a 
seat in front of the fire. She needed the looking 
glass by which to powder her nose and replenish 
the health upon her lips. She was a mere slip of a 
thing, startlingly young to be flying alone, but as 
self-assured as a quack-medicine merchant among 
a crowd of village turnips. She had the profile that 
goes with those boyish erect women who swing 
along in triumphant procession in Grecian frescoes. 

“ Susie,” said Bill, touching her elbow, “ I want 
you to know Teddy Jedburgh, a great pal of 
mine.” 

She remained kneeling but swiveled her body 
round from her plastic waist. Rather disconcert- 
ingly she said nothing and for several seconds 
turned her blue eyes on to this new man in the man- 
ner of a medical officer before whom stood a ma- 


THE BLUE ROOM 69 

lingerer. Then a smile illuminated her face and 
she held out her hand. 

“How are you, Susie?” asked Jedburgh, not 
with anything of impertinence but with the glad ac- 
ceptance of proffered friendship. 

“ Fine. How ’re you, Teddy? Excuse me while 
I put the final touches to the landscape.” 

And all the awkwardness in the situation lifted 
like a sea fog. The true spirit of camaraderie was 
here, rare and delightful, in which the eternal sense 
of sex was absent. Susie Hatch knew that she 
could, if required, stand in the buff before Bill’s 
pal on the dais of a studio without the flicker of 
an eyelid. It was instant and instinctive. 

“ I wish we ’d known you were coming, old 
kid,” said Bill. “ We ’d have taken you out to 
dinner.” 

“ I wish you had,” said Susie. “ As it was I 
nibbled bird seed out of my own pan in the glare of 
the Evening Sun. Bit of luck I did. Otherwise I 
shouldn’t have seen that your transport was in. 
But there are going to be lots of little dinners in the 
future, Bill, as in the good old days.” And she 
slipped off the fireguard, let her simple vanity case 
dangle from her wrist and put the soft palm of her 
hand on Bill’s mustache. 

“Lots of ’em,” said Bill, emphatically, though 
he added to himself, “ But not with me, Susie, my 
dear. The good old days have died the death. 
Bill ’s going to be a good boy now.” (Think how 
the white-haired lady would have preened herself 


70 


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at her accurate knowledge of men if she could have 
heard that sentiment ! ) 

“ I must push along,” she added, collecting her 
hat, and using the dangerous pin with callous fin- 
gers. “ My coat, Teddy, please. It ’s over there. 
There ’s a bite in these April nights.” 

He fetched it and helped it on. Without a doubt 
she could put him in the way of the dear sweet 
thing with a laughing mouth and pacifistic notions. 
Splendid. 

“ So long, Bill,” she said. “ God, how I Ve been 
spoiling for this ! ” And she stood on tiptoe and 
pressed her face against his heart. “ So long, 
Teddy. I ’ve one or two good pals too.” She 
could easily see the soldier-hunger in his eyes, it 
seemed. “Let’s see, — Jedburgh. Then you’re 
the Lord Edward Tankarville Jedburgh, son of the 
Duke of Berkshire, who got a bit of a par all to 
yourself tonight, — Major R. A. F., and a bunch of 
other letters besides. Eh ? ” 

“ I was,” said Teddy, “ five years ago. All that 
stuff ’s a wash-out now.” 

“I get you,” she answered. “Perhaps it’s as 
well. Jedburgh pronounced ‘Jedboro’, — how 
often do you have to tell people how to spell it? ” 

“ Every time,” said Teddy. 

“ I love those comic English names that are spelt 
all wrong.” She gave him her hand again. “ See 
you to-morrow.” 

“ Rather. Cheerio.” 

He watched her as she made her way to the door 


THE BLUE ROOM 


71 


escorted by Bill. A good sort, honest and with a 
golden heart, he thought, and the spiritual courage 
of a Red Cross Nurse. 

“ Tell me about her,” he said, when Bill came 
back. 

Cigars were lighted and glasses filled before Bill 
flung himself into the sofa. He was tired but not 
sleepy. Everything in him tingled at the thought 
of to-morrow, his people, the old homestead, and 
peace. 

“ I put in to one of the New England harbors on 
the coast of Maine, August, 1913. One or two 
hotels about for summer visitors, mostly Cana- 
dians, — a cheery lot who had achieved things — 
but I lived aboard the * Iolanthe ’. Engine trouble 
kept us by the leg for a week. ... I watched a kid 
diving like a mermaid from the end of the break- 
water, brown as a nut. She swam all round the 
yacht day after day as a fish circles something new 
and enticing. Sometimes she would come close 
up, catch my eye, and dip away, as shy as all water 
things. One afternoon I called out and asked her 
on to tea, never dreaming that she would come and 
not caring. I simply wanted to give her a little 
amusement. She came, climbed on like a boy, sat 
in the sun and dried and said yes and no to me while 
I talked, not knowing what to say. She was a 
water baby, the child of the four winds, Nature 
herself. . . . After that she came whenever she 
could and we yarned and she painted the monotony 
of her life, — fisherman’s daughter, tumbledown 


72 


THE BLUE ROOM 


shack, mother worn out by a constantly increasing 
family, father coming in and going out. Men must 
work and women must weep and the harbor bar 
goes moaning. . . . Half a day out, engines right 
again, steward reports stowaway. Up comes mer- 
maid, in a white frock longer at the back than at 
the front, bare brown legs, foot to make a sculptor 
fly to clay, hair bleached by the sun, eyes like robin’s 
eggs and a slice of the sky. . . . Serious talk, a 
frightful passion of tears, an appeal for love that 
would have wrung the bloodless heart of a stone 
saint, — and Bill the human man. Good God, what 
else than to help her to life? Eventually New 
York, an apartment, an allowance, and I give you 
my solemn word the loyalty and devotion of a 
stray dog. . . . Teddy, that child has done more to 
make me respect women than anyone on earth. 
My mother and Susie Hatch sent me to Plattsburg, 
not patriotism, not a sense of self-respect. I had 
to put myself between them and the Huns. . . . She 
is very happy educating herself and taking lessons 
in drawing and is the pet of a collection of art stu- 
dents — but she belongs to me, has cleaved herself 
to me, like ivy to a wall. . . . You saw. 

That ’s the story.” 

There was a rather long silence. Teddy sat on 
the fireguard hugging his knees and looking through 
the wall and right out into the future. To anyone 
who could read it there was an appeal in his eyes 
to be rescued from great loneliness and detachment 
and the sudden spells of melancholy that crept into 


THE BLUE ROOM 


73 


his soul. He would give ten years of his life for 
such an attachment as the one Bill had drawn in 
his blunt, impressionist way. To have someone, 
somewhere, who gave a damn to hear his voice, 
whose exclusive call he would leap to answer, — 
that was what he had come out of death to find. It 
was the only thing to make the escape worth while. 

“ Well,” he said, at last, just as Bill was begin- 
ning to think that he had gone back to one of his 
stony silent moods, “ I need n’t ask what you ’re 
going to do, old son. First the old people for a 
week or so and then Susie and the * Iolanthe ’ and 
the wide stretches of the sea. Is that it? ” 

Bill shook his head. “ No. . . . No. ... I 
don’t know quite what ’s come over me, whether 
this show has aged me or made me less careless, or 
what. All I know is that I ’ve come back with the 
prodigal son’s longing to indulge in an orgy of sen- 
timental reconstruction. Y’ see, I’ve laid the red- 
paint on pretty thick since I was old enough to know 
anything about colors and now I ’ve got a pathetic 
eagerness to turn over a new leaf and build a church 
out of the ruins of my past, so to speak.” 

“ Marriage and kids, eh ? ” 

“ Yes, that ’s the notion. ... A flower of a girl, 
with the dew on her and a morning hymn in her 
eyes, — all to myself, to treat right, and play the 
good old game by, and a young Bill and a tiny Ly- 
lyth, the country year in and year out and home. 
Get me?” 

“ Why not Susie ? ” 


74 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Susie? ... I dunno. But does one marry 
Susie? ” 

“ Perhaps not. Cursed shame. The inevitable 
swing of the pendulum has taken you back to the 
conventions. It always happens.” 

“ Does it? Yes, I suppose it does. What about 
you ? ” 

“ Me? ... It ’s not the same thing. The after- 
math of this bloody war hits me differently. I had 
the home idea pretty strong five years ago and was 
the ordinary British landowning cove who shot his 
birds, and played his cricket, and rebuilt the cot- 
tages of his tenants, was quiet and orderly and even 
a bit idealistic, — believing in God and the Consti- 
tution and myself, as one of the men born to take a 
hand in the destinies of the British Empire, and all 
that. You know the type, — title, houses, horses, 
London, the country, a nice girl of my own tradi- 
tions, marriage, kids, the House of Lords, duty and 
a muscular old age, inspiring my son to walk the 
narrow path, take the jumps, play with a straight 
bat and carry on as per.” 

“ Well ? What ’s the matter with all that now ? ” 

“ All over, old thing. Dead as a skinned rabbit. 
I ’m a Dodo, like the rest of my class. Labor has 
us by the throat, the land and the money bags. Be- 
sides which I ’ve come out of a long game of touch 
wood with death and obeying orders blindly, many 
of 'em absolutely crass in their stupidity, with no 
longer any faith in God, — not a farthing’s worth.” 

“ How ’s that ? ” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


75 


“Well, it’s difficult to explain. I believe it ’s be- 
cause I resent this war as something so fiendish, so 
crooked, so purposeless that if there ’d been a God 
he would never have let it happen. I don’t say that 
I didn’t enjoy it all after I got used to it. I did. 
I had the time of my life, — but it swung me into 
a new way of looking at things and it ’s left me with 
faith only in the men who did the dirty work with 
jokes on their lips, the women who patched them up 
to do it again and the beardless sky-larking boys 
who went up in the air and did n’t give a curse if 
they never came down again. My faith is in hu- 
manity now, and in humanity as the opposite of 
God, as a mass of small creatures with a limited 
time out of which to snatch all the happiness that ’s 
going, — to love and play the giddy ox and go on the 
loose. Why not ? As there ’s no God there ’s no 
need to earn a safe seat in Heaven. The narrow 
path is no thoroughfare and rectitude’s a waste of 
effort. So I begin where you leave off, Bill. 
That ’s the way it ’s hit me, and while you ’re putting 
up the stones that are going to make your church, I 
pull my church down and hide the stones in wild 
oats. I ’m here, in a country that ’s not so blood- 
drained and twisted into knots as my own, to take 
on a Susie Hatch. I give myself extended leave. 
I ’m going to pay myself back for five years of 
close attention to the job we all had in hand by get- 
ting even with my old idea of God. . . . There you 
have me, as far as I know myself.” 

There was another silence, during which Bill 


76 


THE BLUE ROOM 


looked closely at the tall, spare man who sat nurs- 
ing his knees on the fireguard, — the man built on 
the clean, thoroughbred lines of a race horse, with 
a high and thoughtful forehead, wide apart gray 
eyes, fair fine hair that went into natural kinks 
when allowed to do so ; a straight nose, a small fair 
mustache over a mouth that was devoid of sensu- 
alism but not of the desire to kiss, and a lean jaw. 
A distinguished soldier, with the knack of getting 
men to work against the grain and follow him into 
feats of unbelievable courage, with a sense of dis- 
cipline that had sent him back to his command after 
three separate doses of shrapnel that would have 
put many others on a cushy billet behind the 
lines. . . . He knew him for all that. The rest 
came as a surprise, because during all the monoto- 
nous hours of the voyage home the fourth wall had 
never been let down. . . . Krupp had blown his 
God out of Heaven, it seemed, and given shell shock 
to his sense of law and order. 

Bill got up and stretched himself and pitched the 
butt of his cigar into the fireplace. He under- 
stood, though in the light of his own point of view 
he was sorry. It was not for him, of all men, to 
moralize. 

“Well, good luck, Teddy,” he said. 

“ The same to you, Bill,” said Teddy. 

And they turned in for the night, to follow their 
diametrical paths when the new day came. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


77 


III 

The message that Bill had sent over the wire to 
his mother, asking her not to meet him in the City 
but to let him find her among her flowers in the old 
garden with his father, was received the evening 
before the transport put into the river and edged 
its cheering way through a misty day to dock as 
the sun went down. Martha was with her at the 
time, with a hammering heart, inarticulate under 
great waves of emotion, in which gratitude to God 
for prayers so fully answered clashed with the 
impending joy of seeing her hero again. 

Both the Mortimers were relieved in being spared 
the effort of a long and early drive to a City full 
of Dead Sea fruit, and they were equally touched 
by Bill’s desire for a reunion under the roof of the 
old house in which he had been born and to which 
they themselves had retired. It proved to them, 
too, as nothing else could have done, the accuracy 
of their contention that the reaction from war would 
find Bill in a domestic mood. If he had asked them 
to come up to meet him, had dined with them, sent 
them home and plunged into the current of his old 
life with his old friends, their pet scheme, in which 
Martha Wainwright was to play the leading part, 
must have crumbled like paper at the touch of a 
lighted match. 

Mrs. Mortimer had read the telegram aloud to 
the eager slip of a girl and had watched the flame in 
her eyes and the rush of color to her cheeks with her 


78 THE BLUE ROOM 

usual imperturbability but an excitement very diffi- 
cult to conceal. She would go happily to what- 
ever was waiting for her on the other side if she 
could leave Bill married and settled down with this 
most suitable girl. 

The whole of the next day was a series of broken 
precedents. Routine was shattered. The studied 
equability and smoothness of meals was replaced by 
an electrical snappiness and even irritability. The 
Old Buck was on the tips of his toes. He could 
hardly bear to sit down even for five consecutive 
minutes. To the extreme annoyance of the house- 
keeper and Albery he insisted upon superintending 
personally every detail in the preparation of Bill’s 
suite of rooms. He trotted about the house to make 
sure that everything was in the pink of order, he 
inspected the garden with the anxiety of a Colonel 
anticipating the visit of a Brigadier General, snap- 
ping absurd orders to gardeners which left them in 
a condition of mental chaos, and by his repeated in- 
terference reduced the head coachman to the verge 
of blasphemy. Even the faithful Denham, with 
whom he was, as a rule, on terms of intimate friend- 
ship, fled at the sound of his parade rasp, and as- 
sured the kitchen that if “ he had much more of this 
he’d either kill the old devil by giving him a dose 
of hair dye or go back to England by the next boat 
and buy that there pub in his native village.” Fi- 
nally, very tired and irascible, he retired early in 
order to undergo an extra dose of face massage and 
electrical treatment and heard the conscientious 


THE BLUE ROOM 


79 


clock on his mantelpiece strike every hour until five, 
when he fell into the sleep of a schoolboy on the 
verge of his first summer camp or a young girl be- 
fore her initial dip into the world. If anyone had 
told him that even the return of his beloved Bill 
would so far have flung him out of balance he would 
have sent out a scoffing laugh and told him that 
“nothing upsets me, my dear fellow. I am the 
original egotist.” 

The white-haired lady was moved to precisely 
the same degree but to more useful results. With a 
song on her lips and a mother-smile on her again 
beautiful face she quietly and surreptitiously fol- 
lowed the Commodore from upset to upset, spread- 
ing oil on troubled waters and placating a distraught 
menage with soothing and serviceable words. She 
got Martha to pick a bunch of early spring flowers 
and spent an hour of the most exquisite happiness 
arranging them on the massive pieces of colonial 
furniture in Bill’s bedroom and the low-ceilinged 
sitting room which connected with it. And all the 
while her mind was flooded with memories of a little 
boy and his needs and stories and precious posses- 
sions, and the odd sweet things that he used to say 
in those far distant hours when he would sit on the 
floor with Robinson Crusoe and keep up a constant 
prattle while her hair was being done for dinner. 
Once more she felt the fresh healthy cheek pressed 
against her breast and the strong young arms about 
her neck. “ Oh God,” she cried out aloud, as she 
stood looking with wet eyes at a little photograph 


80 


THE BLUE ROOM 


of herself with the chubby Bill on her lap, “if only 
my dreams had come true and I had been permitted 
by Fate to marry where my heart was. Bill would 
have been a different man to come back to me ! ” 
And it was at that moment that the second twinge 
of conscience attacked her as the vision of Martha 
Wainwright stood momentarily before her, slim and 
virginal and trusting. But once again, because 
Bill was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, she 
dismissed pity from her mind. For all his frail- 
ties, Bill was a man that any woman should be proud 
to possess. 

But it was Martha who caught the first sight of 
Bill. 

Standing among the same belt of trees on the hil- 
lock at the bend of the road from which she had 
watched him drive away, she waited hour after hour 
until, at last, she was rewarded by the flash of his 
profile as a car flicked past. He saw the young 
figure against the appropriate background of silver 
birches, recognized in her the pretty child whom he 
remembered having seen in the garden with his 
mother, and brought his hand up to the peak of his 
cap. She waved back — and he took away with 
him the memory of a smile which rang a little bell 
in his soul. What was her name? Bainbridge — 
Waterhouse — Goodfellow? Something like that, 
— something which carried with it a sense of integ- 
rity and honest effort, of a building planted on 
solid foundations by people of sound constitution 
and God-fearing spirit. Although he had never 


THE BLUE ROOM 


81 


given her a thought, it came back to him that he had 
seen her standing on that same small mount among 
the rocks and trees when he had been driven the 
other way to probable death and he was glad, in 
that throe of sentiment, to see her there again. It 
gave him a feeling of returning to find things unal- 
tered, untouched, of having been overlooked by the 
devil’s eye and left undesecrated by the ingenious 
weapons of destruction. 

He little knew with what an exquisite pang of 
joy Martha cried out to herself “ He remembers ! 
He remembers!” or how she took back to her 
duties at home a love which burgeoned in her heart. 

IV 

The Old Rip, deaf to all suggestions, unamenable 
to any change in his definite program, and as 
peppery as an Anglo-Indian Colonel before an in- 
spection by the Commander-in-Chief, arranged the 
household on the steps of the portico a good twenty 
minutes before Bill’s car was timed, bar accidents, 
to arrive. Made up as the country gentleman in 
one of those stunted top hats of brown felt which, 
according to “ Punch ”, are worn by squires at prize 
cattle shows, a pepper-and-salt coat with large flap 
pockets, and riding breeches with doeskin gaiters, 
he took his place on the bottom step with the white- 
haired lady. He had finally arrived at this costume 
after several complete changes, and his nerves were 
almost as frazzled as those of Denham, who had 
brought the indecision as to appropriate garments 


82 


THE BLUE ROOM 


to an abrupt and icy ending by flinging up his hands 
and crying out, “ I hope the Lord will send a 
bloomin’ angel after me before I dribble into this 
’ere kind of second childhood ! ” 

In the order of what he chose to consider their 
importance the Commodore had, after much bick- 
ering and many stamps of the foot, arranged his 
staff, as he suddenly took it into his head to call it, 
on the upper steps. By insisting on placing Mrs. 
Porter, the shapeless housekeeper, in front of Al- 
bery, he had given mortal offense to the pompous 
butler and rendered poor little Mrs. Porter tremu- 
lously fearful of her future. She was beyond the 
time when she could stand without hysterics the 
biting sarcasm of that gobbling turkey, as she had 
mentally labelled Albery. Another crassly inju- 
dicious act had been performed by Barclay Morti- 
mer, the after-effects of which would make bad 
blood in the servants’ dining room for a consider- 
able time, by his ordering Denham to stand below 
Tasker, the head coachman, who had been with the 
family man and boy for fifty years. “ The derned 
valet, by gosh,” was fully alive to the fact that he 
had been forced into an invidious position against 
his better judgment, and being already in a state 
of absolute disruption, after several unholy hours 
with the Old Buck, could hardly listen to the long 
string of murmured insults from the irate old man 
behind him without blowing up. As to Mrs. Fos- 
dick, the cook, one glance at her crab-apple face was 
enough to indicate the gross indignity which had 


83 


THE BLUE ROOM 

been put upon her. Just because Ada, the compar- 
atively new waitress, possessed the come-hither in 
her bold brown eyes, wore skirts which showed a 
little more than the flutter of neat ankles and had 
russet hair in which there were streaks of copper, 
the master had told her to stand in front of the eld- 
erly dame who had been the queen of the kitchen for 
so many years. It was enough to make a body 
prance out of the house without giving notice and 
leave the ungrateful family to the tender mercies of 
a slap-dash Irish woman who only knew how to 
cook for a priest, that it was. The remainder of 
the menage, consisting of the gardeners, maids and 
stable-hands, stood under the portico in any order 
they chose, but the amazing blunders in servant 
precedence thus willfully committed had left them 
stultified and surly. There were more than ample 
grounds in all this for the Trades Union of Con- 
descending Helpers of the Household to order an 
immediate strike. 

From time to time, during the period of waiting, 
the Old Rip wheeled around and glared at the dis- 
satisfied group of muttering people behind him and 
brought about a temporary stoniness by shouting, 
with his best parade rasp, “ Let there be silence, 
please.” And all the while, completely indifferent 
to the clash of temperament that was all about her, 
the white-haired lady waited, with a little smile 
playing round her mouth, to feel, once again, the 
strong arms of her only son. 

Old Glory floated above the house in Bill’s honor, 


84 


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side by side with the banners of the Allies, and a 
dozen Boy Scouts of all sizes were drawn up on the 
lawn to cheer themselves hoarse. It was a terrible 
but well-earned ordeal through which Bill was to 
be forced to go. 

As the car came through the old gates and bowled 
along the wide road, the boughs of trees under 
whose protecting shade the spirits of departed Mor- 
timers seemed to hover, bent to welcome the one 
to whom they looked to perpetuate the name, and the 
air rang with the thin cries of the lads on the lawn. 

Bill gave one quick nervous glance at all this 
ghastly fuss for which, knowing his father, he was 
partially prepared, thanked all his stars that he had 
been spared the village band, sprang out from among 
his baggage, caught his mother in his arms and held 
her tight. Then he turned to Barclay Mortimer, 
whose over-massaged face was twisted with emo- 
tion, flung an arm round his shoulder and kissed 
him as he had always done when, as a boy, he had 
joined him for the holidays. The old man tried 
to utter the opening sentences of a well-prepared 
speech, stammered, stumbled, and burst into tears. 
In all his reprobate life never before had he felt so 
genuine an acknowledgment of God’s goodness as at 
that moment. The boy loved him and he gave 
great praise. 

And then, facing the old house which had never 
amounted to a row of beans before but which, in 
his new mood, stood for home and a wife, a young 
Bill and a tiny Lylyth, Bill’s face broke into its 


THE BLUE ROOM 


85 


usual sunny grin, and he mounted the steps, with his 
arm round his mother’s waist, grasped one after 
another of the eager hands that were stretched out 
to him, indignities forgotten for the time being, 
achieved the hall and finally the drawing-room and 
stood alone once more with the white-haired lady 
whose peccadillos he knew and condoned, whose 
former beauty and invincibility he had admired and 
marveled at, and whose deep love and services he 
could never, never forget. 

“ Mum,” he said, “ my own darling Mum.” 

And they stood and whispered broken words to 
each other, under the eyes of dead Mortimers, while 
the Commodore, himself again, doled out dollar 
bills to the uneven Boy Scouts, the beaming and be- 
nign Squire to the life. 

And in the house of honest effort away behind 
the trees, Martha Wainwright, marked out to be 
“brought forward ” as the mother of a new genera- 
tion of Mortimers, wrote out her list of groceries 
with little pearls of joy dropping on the slip. 

And so wags the world. 

V 

“You have had the extreme privilege of lead- 
ing your mother to her after-dinner resting place, 
my dear fellow,” said the Commodore, “but I’ll be 
damned if I’ll forego my right to arrange her 
cushions.” 

With that low soft laugh of hers which, in the 
old days, had more than once made Barclay Morti- 


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mer too keenly aware of the fact that he stood be- 
fore her stripped of his poses, the white-haired 
lady turned from her son to her husband. “ How 
nice to be fought over by two such handsome men,” 
she said. 

Whereupon Bill gave her up and backed away 
laughing. It was an utterly new thing for him to 
see his father and mother permanently under the 
same roof and behaving like elderly lovers in a 
Sheridan play. It gave him great amusement as 
well as, he had to confess, an odd sensation of pain. 

In return for her flattery Mortimer bowed pro- 
foundly, — as profoundly, that is, as his stays 
would permit, — raised her hand to his lips, and, 
with more than his usual mixture of courtesy and 
respect, piled cushions at the head of the Colonial 
sofa. He was in the highest spirits and so frankly 
happy in this reunion that he radiated good humor. 
His hair had been waved for the occasion and his 
mustache curled back with a hot iron. The rib- 
bon of the Legion d’Honneur made a red spot on 
the lapel of his tight fitting dinner jacket. 

Mrs. Mortimer allowed herself to be placed upon 
the sofa and smiled up at Bill over the shoulders of 
the Old Rip as he bent to arrange her skirt about her 
feet. This was one of the good moments to which 
she had been looking forward during every one of 
the long hours of two desperately anxious years, 
and her heart seemed still to float in. tears. 

“ Sit near me, Bill,” she said. 

“We will both sit near you, Madame. I decline 


THE BLUE ROOM 


87 


to be made to agonize under the pangs of jealousy 
by this intruder to our Paradise.” And the old man 
guffawed at the joke none could appreciate so fully 
as those who knew him so well. They were his best 
audience. 

“ I ’ll just dash up and get my pipe,” said Bill. 
“ I can’t smoke anything else.” 

And the instant that he left the morning room 
and went whistling to the stairs a change came over 
the father and mother. Dropping their artificial 
spirit of comedy and badinage they drew instinc- 
tively together, alone for the first time since the 
return of the one person on earth who united them 
in unselfishness. 

“ Lylyth, you were right. He ’s not the same 
man,” said Mortimer, eagerly. 

“Sssh! — lower your voice. . . . Yes, he’s al- 
tered. A hundred little things that he has said 
make it plain. His very look proves it. But 
don’t let him guess that we ’ve been planning for his 
future or making a scheme to lead him into mar- 
riage. Promise me that.” 

“ You have my word, my dear. Men hate to be 
discussed and coerced. We must let him appear to 
work out his own salvation while we pull the 
strings unseen. Already I can hear the creaking 
of a cradle.” 

“ Yes, but I have one great fear, Barclay.” 

“ Good God, what ? ” 

“ That girl, Hatch. He has come back full of 
generosity and sentiment. It is n’t at all impossible 


88 


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that he may want to do what you men in his mood 
have often done before and make her a good wo- 
man, as it ’s called.’ , 

Mortimer stood aghast. “ An appalling 
thought,” he said. “ What on earth has put it into 
your head ? ” 

“ A knowledge of your sex. History reeks with 
instances. Therefore we must go warily. If he 
has built a romance round Susan Hatch we must 
undermine it not by arguments but by apparent 
agreement and the production at the right moment 
and in the right manner of the girl who has always 
been good. He comes to us inspired to regenera- 
tion. Only by virtue can this be achieved, — and 
if this is not in his mind we must put it there. . . . 
How . . . how good to have him home again ! ” 

The Commodore, forgetting that he had learned 
the gesture from his Italian inamorata in the Villa 
Fiora, raised his hands to Heaven. “ Whatever 
else I omitted to give him,” he said, “ I was lavish 
in the gift of looks. ... We might easily be taken 
for brothers, don’t you think, Madame? ” And al- 
though he chuckled away the edge of this conceit he 
squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest and 
gave a fluke to his absurd mustache. Then, with 
a sudden return to seriousness and in a voice quiv- 
ering with a kind of pathetic eagerness he added, 
“ I leave the matter of Bill’s marriage entirely in 
your hands, Lylyth. For God’s sake see that I 
have the joy and satisfaction of riding a grandson 
on my knee before I answer to the summons.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


89 


“ It is the last object of my life,” replied Mrs. 
Mortimer. “I will leave no stone unturned, no 
trick untried, no diplomacy unexercised to achieve 
it. Rely upon me. . . . Talk about something else, 
quickly. He is on the stairs.” 

The Old Buck rose to the occasion. “ It was King 
Edward who sent for me to his box in the Royal 
Enclosure at Ascot that year,” he said loudly, as 
though in the middle of one of his anecdotes, “ and 
in that inimitable way of his congratulated me on 
the .... Ah, here you are, my boy. I wish I 
could join you in a pipe. I have never managed to 
achieve the habit.” He gave a side glance at his 
wife to catch her look of appreciation and lowered 
himself carefully into an arm-chair. An artist in 
worldliness he was, and so remained, he thanked his 
stars. 

Bill beamed first at one and then at the other, and 
so that there might be no jealousy at his favoritism 
of either took up a stand in front of the old fire- 
place, with his back against the mantel-board. 
God, how often, out there in that waterlogged funk- 
hole, he had longed for this moment, and wrapped 
his parents and his home about with a veil of ideal- 
ism! ... A simple soul, this Bill Mortimer, 
loving happiness and ease and the game of life; 
without an ounce of guile, perfectly ready to pay 
and pay generously for whatever gave him pleasure; 
a heart instantly moved to sympathy and kindness 
towards women and men and beasts, susceptible to 
beauty to a degree even beyond that which had car- 


90 THE BLUE ROOM 

ried his father into similar feminine embarrass- 
ments, and so good-natured that it was as easy to 
lead him by the nose as any school-boy. Deep 
down in his soul, too, there was a sense of poetry 
and a definite ache for permanency which, awakened 
by all that he had seen of death and destruction, 
made him almost as pathetic a figure as the two old 
people who had been forced to slip into the back- 
waters and who had utterly lost the chance that re- 
mained to him, if he knew how to take it, of twist- 
ing his rudder into mid-stream and turning his 
pleasure craft into a cargo boat. 

I love this room/’ he said, running his dark 
eyes over the things among which he had grown up. 
“ And how corking all the old stuff looks. I hope 
I have the luck to bring home the sort of girl who 
won t call it junk and want to pitch it neck and crop 
into the garden.” 

The Old Rip and the white-haired lady exchanged 
a quick signal. Away went their anxiety as to the 
Hatch person. He had built up a picture of an un- 
known girl. 

“ Bil1 ! • • • Surely you are not thinking of be- 
ing conventional at your age?” Mrs. Mortimer 
asked the question with the most perfect simulation 
of lightness, to hang on his answer with held 
breath. Little he knew how splendidly he helped 
the great plan by touching so soon upon the sub- 
ject of it. 

“ Yes > as a matter of ^ct I am,” he said simply. 

“ M y dear fellow,” cried the Old Rip, “ if you 


THE BLUE ROOM 91 

flung 1 a bomb in our midst you could n’t surprise us 
as much.” He was a master in the art of picking 
up cues. 

I suppose not,” said Bill, watching his smoke 
filter into the air. He made a fine figure in his 
uniform, in spite of its high collar and lack of belt. 

But I may as well be frank with you right away 
and get it over. Bill ’s going to be a good boy now 
and play the little old game of domesticity. That ’s 
the truth. So find me a wife, Mother, and I ’ll 
show you how serious I am.” 

It was almost too good to be true, well and 
shrewdly as she had banked on this change of mood. 
“ My dear Bill,” she said, controlling the ecstatic 
Commodore by raising one long finger, “ is n’t that 
rather a large order ? Who do I know now that I 
am out of the world ? Besides, there are compli- 
cations in the shapes of Susie Hatch, Birdie Car- 
roll, Jeanne Dacoral and the rest.” 

“A washout,” he said. “Bill’s plumping for 
respectability these days. He ’s all for being the 
little gentleman now.” It was an amusing habit of 
his to refer to himself in the third person as he had 
done as a youngster. 

The two great sighs of relief of the disrespectable 
parents joined forces in mid-air and went paradox- 
ically to the gates of Heaven. 

“ It ’s like this, my dears,” he went on before 
they could play-act again. “ One had a certain 
amount of time for thinking out there, and pretty 
straight thoughts at that. I saw myself with a bit 


92 


THE BLUE ROOM 


of a shock with the best half of my life behind me 
and nothing but a record of darned good times to 
show for it. And at the end of it all, and during 
those days after the armistice when a sort of let- 
down feeling crept over us all, and playing the vic- 
tor business began to pall like the devil, I put to my- 
self this question. What in fairness are you going 
to do, Bill, old son, to show your gratitude for hav- 
ing been let off? And the answer was obvious. 
Go home, and if luck’s still with you hunt about for 
the sort of dear sweet soul who will fit the bill ac- 
cording to mother and you, Dad, and the old gentle- 
men who have frowned down at me from these 
walls ever since I was a nipper. And so I ’ve come 
home with nothing in my mind except this new job, 
— the peace job, and now that I’m here and the 
whole atmosphere seems to egg me on to it I want 
you to help me, because I ’m a boob at the business 
and ’pon my soul I hardly know how to begin to 
say things to Miss Respectable. Wait a second. 
Let me get the rest of it off my chest before I get 
self-conscious and do the clam act. You mentioned 
Susan Hatch and the rest, Mother, and I said that 
they’re a washout. That’s so. They belong to 
the good old days. But, — and this is what sticks 
in my gills, — is there a Miss Respectable knocking 
about who will take me on when I play honest and 
tell her the Story, however Bowdlerized? And 
that ’s what I shall be expected to do, I take it? ” 

He came to an end and looked from one eager 
listener to the other with a very apparent desire to 


THE BLUE ROOM 


93 


be encouraged in the matter of his leaf-turning and 
discouraged on the question of his scrupulousness. 

At once he got what he wanted on both counts. 

Barclay Mortimer struggled dramatically to his 
feet and put his hand on his son’s shoulder with 
spontaneous affection. “ God bless you, Bill,” he 
said. “ It was only necessary for you to tell us this 
to make to-day the happiest of my life.” 

The white-haired lady rose too, and slipped one 
long-fingered hand through her son’s arm. “ I 
echo that, thankfully, my dear, and of course I will 
help you, — though at the moment my mind is a 
blank, and as to the need for you to worry about 
certain chapters in the book as you have written it 
there is none. Let the dead past bury its dead. 
More harm than good is done by taking a young 
thing with her eyes on the future for a gloomy visit 
to the catacombs. Besides, this is the twentieth 
century, and the modern girl does not demand per- 
fection. Egotistical confessions of youthful follies 
made to Innocence in discreetly lighted conserva- 
tories went out with the stuffed canary and the 
draped Venus. It would be received to-day with a 
peal of laughter and an outburst of chaff.” 

“ Oh,” said Bill. “Well, that’s the best thing 
I ’ve heard for a long time. It puts my tail up no 
end.” And he whistled the first few bars of an old 
regimental song as much to show his relief as to 
bring the blood pressure of the room back to nor- 
mal. He had never seen his father so parental be- 
fore. He realized with deep regret that age had got 


94 


THE BLUE ROOM 


hold of him, in spite of his bitter fight. Nor had he 
ever seen his mother so confident, so electrical, and 
so supremely a mistress of life. He was glad that 
he had pulled down his fourth wall at once and let 
them see into the sanctum of his heart. 

“ Mind you,” he added suddenly, “ don’t run 
away with the idea that I ’ve got to fall passionately 
in love and that sort of thing, and am going to be 
difficult to please. I ’ve been through that phase, 
I ’m sorry to say, — sorry because I can’t look for- 
ward to it as something not yet done, if you know 
what I mean. I shall be so grateful to the right 
little soul who will do me the honor to become my 
wife that, although there will be no first lover stuff 
about me, there will be a frightfully keen desire to 
make her happy in every other conceivable way. 
Having turned over a new leaf I ’ll see that I do my 
derndest to make it a good ’un. I want you to get 
that. In other words, I ’m so bursting keen to 
settle down at last and play the game for all I ’m 
worth that it ’s — it ’s pathetic.” 

He was glad of the excuse to cross the room for 
a match. In his jerky colloquial way he had let 
himself go and there was something suspiciously 
like a quiver in his voice. 

And so the first evening of Bill’s home coming 
was brought to an end with everybody’s cards on 
the table, except the one on which Martha Wain- 
wright’s flower-like face was painted. And this the 
whitfe-haired lady held up her sleeve for future use, 
in what she conceived to be the right way. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


95 


Barclay Mortimer, seeing his chance to improve 
the occasion with a few well-rounded platitudes of 
the kind that he had written to his son in his fa- 
mous series of letters, — Emerson, Ruskin and de la 
Rochefoucauld had been his inspirers, — would have 
taken the stage had he not received a quick signal 
from his wife. With an unselfishness that was so 
new as to be startling he took the hint, saved his 
remarks for a more propitious occasion and let 
well enough alone. It was a gigantic triumph of 
matter over mind. Instead, being on his feet, he 
pom-pomed about the room so that Bill might ad- 
mire his slimness. Things looked good and he was 
as proud of his wife’s perspicacity as he was of his 
power to back her up. He was, also, eternally 
grateful to the war for its putting him in the way of 
becoming a grandfather, — the one remaining am- 
bition of his life. 

“ Well,” he said finally, “ bed ’s a good place, I 
think, eh Madame? ” 

“ I think so too,” replied Mrs. Mortimer. 

“ I ’ll go out and walk up and down,” said Bill, 
“ if it ’s all the same to you. I want to taste the 
old scent of the garden and make certain that this 
is not one of my dreams. Good night, Mum dar- 
ling. You ’ll work things right. You always did. 
Good night, Dad, old man. Take me on to-morrow 
for a round of golf and beat me.” 

Golf ! He had n’t touched a club for five years, 
and he could n’t do much more than touch one now, 
trussed up in those stays of his. But the suggest 


96 


THE BLUE ROOM 


tion that he was still a hefty fellow, by Gad, pleased 
him beyond words and he threw himself into a Braid 
attitude before an imaginary ball and laughed. 
“ Eleven o’clock on the first tee,” he said, “ with all 
the pleasure in life.” It would be easy tQ tell Den- 
ham to come after him and fetch him back on a 
matter of the most urgent importance. Anyway, 
that wonderful suit of golf clothes would get an 
airing. 

The white-haired lady kept a perfectly straight 
face. 

“ Oh, by the way,” said Bill, “ what ’s the name 
of that charming little girl who used to come and 
see you before we went into the old push ? ” 

It was a question that caused the old people al- 
most to jump out of their skins. Surely there must 
be something occult in all this, 

“ Do you mean Martha Wainwright?” asked 
Mrs. Mortimer, hiding the gleam in her eyes by 
bending over the sofa. 

“ That ’s it,” said Bill. “ Martha — suggestive 
of pansies and sweet-williams, and Wainwright of 
an anvil, hit hard and well. By Jove yes. That ’s 
it.” 

“Why do you ask?” Old Mortimer touched 
the cheeks of a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley to show 
that he was only faintly and politely interested. 

“ I saw her standing on the hill at the bend of the 
road after I ’d said good-by, and she was there 
again to-day when I drove up. The last and the 
first. Somehow she made me feel that I ’d come 


THE BLUE ROOM 97 

back to find nothing changed here. I liked it aw- 
fully. Does she still come over sometimes ? ” 

“ Every afternoon/’ said Mrs. Mortimer. 

“ Oh, good.” 

Good? It was astounding, thrilling, full of a 
predestination that made Bill’s search for a wife 
almost an accomplished fact. . . . Good Heavens, 
what an effort it was for the Old Rip to hold his 
tongue. Sooner or later, before he went to bed that 
epoch-making night, something had to go, — and 
it went as soon as he stood with his wife on the wide 
corridor at the top of the stairs. 

“ My love,” he whispered, “ the fairies were 
abroad when you were born,” and he kissed her on 
the cheek. 

“ Bad fairies,” thought the white-haired lady, but 
she smiled and bowed. 

And when Bill, standing on the road in the magic 
of the moon, breathed in the familiar scent of pines 
and maples and looked about him at the old scene of 
his boyhood, it was in the direction of the Wain- 
wright house behind the woods that his eyes turned 
unconsciously. 

Martha was asleep, dreaming — dreaming. And 
under her pillow, as usual, was the photograph of 
Bill. Miss Respectable. . . . 


I 



PART III 


I 

Imbued with a sense of comfort that was far too 
good to be true, Tom Wainwright opened one eye 
slowly, cautiously and with great suspicion. Catch- 
ing sight of a large airy bedroom hung with photo-* 
graphs of himself taken in every Harvard attitude 
and filled with solid pieces of furniture that ap- 
peared to him to give it an atmosphere of almost 
painful luxury, he immediately shut it. . . . It was 
a dream, the old familiar frequently recurring 
dream out of which he had come daily, at unearthly 
earliness, for nearly two years, to find himself in 
the rough quarters of a camp, the unspeakable filth 
of a dugout or rolled in a sleeping bag out under 
the stars. That idiot phrase “ the glory of the 
trenches ” which had made so many men blaspheme 
came back ironically into his mind. 

He opened the other eye and recognized his bed- 
room, his own old bedroom of pre-war days, alive 
with memories of school and college and all the 
things of peace that had been knocked edgeways by 
the hideous cataclysm which had sent the whole 


100 


THE BLUE ROOM 


world reeling and staggering and left, it is to be 
hoped, a mark on every individual member of Euro- 
pean governments by which they may be identified 
for Hell. “ Theirs the blame, and theirs the shame 
and theirs the ujtimate tears.” 

Was he home again? Could this be that honest- 
to-goodness house in which he had lived through 
years of unbelievable comfort? . . . From Camp 
Upton and all its chaos and cloying sand to a troop- 
ship packed like a grotesque box of sardines; from 
troopship to debarkation at the back-end of muddle; 
from mud, rain, growling and little flares of mu- 
tiny; forced marches, bedraggled train journeys to 
rear lines marked with the remainders of previous 
regiments ; front line funk-holes, monotonous vistas 
of pock-marked earth and battered barbedrwire 
poles, blind rushes through the shambles of death 
to ruined villages ; finally the utter boredom of Ger- 
man billets to — what? It had been a long, long 
way to Tipperary, — the Tipperary which was that 
very house, that very room with the mementos of 
the best of his days, and downstairs his people. . . . 

Fully awake, but spiritually afraid to open both 
eyes at once in case he might find that his furtive 
glances had shown him something not yet achieved, 
Tom Wainwright lay very still. His hands were 
flat out on the sheets. “ Now then,” he said to him- 
self, “ get on to it. Pull yourself together. What 
happened yesterday?” He set the machinery of 
his brain at work and in a series of moving, 
strangely moving, pictures saw himself undergo the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


101 


emotional welcome of father and mother and sister, 
the return home to a wonderful dinner with grin- 
ning servants coming in and out of a well-known 
room, and an evening during which he answered a 
fire of questions and thrilled, as any boy would, at 
the hero-worship that was given to him. And as 
he got these things and fixed them one after another, 
and caught the sounds of birds singing outside his 
window, of the breeze making its friendly rustle 
in the trees that he had climbed, and of a grass-cut- 
ting machine somewhere near giving out that steady 
whir, which, like nothing else, seems peculiarly to 
belong to peace, confidence came and funk left. It 
was all true. This was Tipperary. . . . And as he 
sat up, tousle-headed, and looked about him with 
affection, he saw a man in a dressing-gown shaving 
in front of a looking glass, a tall, square-shouldered 
man with his grey hair unbrushed and something 
about the back of his neck that belongs only to those 
who have kept their chins high in the struggle to 
live. 

“ Damned nice of the old man to come in and 
shave and not wake me up,” he thought, and catch- 
ing his father’s eyes in the glass gave him the sort 
of salute that he reserved especially for Brigadier 
Generals. 

“ Hello, Dad.” 

“ Hello, Tom.” 

And they grinned at each other from opposite 
ends of the room, saying in the eloquent silence of 
father and son all the affectionate things which 


102 


THE BLUE ROOM 


both had been hoarding up for two years and could 
no more put into words than fly over the moon. 

It was Tom who was the first to master his voice. 
Thank God he had had the luck to do one or two 
things of which that good old Dad would not be 
ashamed. “ Got to go up this morning? ” he asked, 
casually. 

But Wainwright beat him. No one could have 
told by his tone that this was not the most ordinary 
of mornings. “ Yes, but I ’m coming down on the 
1 :52. If you ’ve nothing better to do, we might 
put in a round before dinner.” 

“ There is n’t anything on earth better to do,” 
said Tom, leaping out of bed. He found it neces- 
sary to make a dash for the window to hide the sud- 
den twist of his mouth. 

And old Wainwright, who wasn’t old, smiled. 
It was a thing like that which made his la- 
borious days worth while. “ A good glass, yours,” 
he said. “ I often came in here to shave when you 
were on the other side.” 

“ Fine,” said Tom, who never by any chance used 
it for such a purpose. He could only see one side 
of his face in it. But the enormous compliment 
which had been paid to him by its use went all the 
way home. “ I don’t think I ’ll come up with you 
this morning, unless you want me. I think I ’ll 
slack for a bit and be domestic for a change. 
Mother and Martha might like it, don’t you think 
so?” 

“ Good Lord, yes. I don’t want to see you near 


THE BLUE ROOM 


103 


the office until you Ve found your feet, old man. 
Play around as long as you feel like it.” But the 
subtle hint which his son had given him of a desire 
to put his shoulder to the civil wheel again was 
worth a million dollars. 

He had seen and heard of men, innumerable men, 
upon whom the effects of war had reacted very 
differently. Some of them returned to their old 
haunts with what appeared to be an utter incapacity 
to adjust themselves to pre-war conditions. They 
shied at the thought of sedentary work and regular- 
ity. They had patience for nothing unless there 
was a girl in it. If also there was music so much 
the better. But the former there must be, pretty 
or not pretty. Others brought back with them such 
a sense of tragic rage and disillusion at the unutter- 
able futility and waste of their patriotism and ef- 
forts, both physical and spiritual, that they went 
about under a continual mental shell-shock, out of 
which they emerged infrequently to curse the glib 
and ignorant politicians who had already forgotten 
the war and its causes and left the incapacitated 
men to the charity of the public. Dangerous men 
these, imbued with the sort of thoughts that are 
parochially placed under the heading of Bolshevism. 
Men who did not intend, without a grim and bitter 
struggle, to permit their country to indulge in the 
old tyrannies of government without the consent of 
peoples, the old Fetish worship of hatred masking 
under the divine name of Patriotism. There was 
that other set, too, who, not intellectual enough to 


104 


THE BLUE ROOM 


look back at the causes and forward at the results 
of the war with anything but a sense of bewilder- 
ment, sneered at all talk of readjustment, went 
about saying, “ Hell, we paid, who ’s going to pay 
us ? ” and scoffed at the suggestion that they must 
return, if anyone would take them, to their old dull 
jobs. They demanded the fat of the land. They 
had earned it. They stood about with an expec- 
tant and rather ugly grin waiting to be spoiled. 
There were very few whose normality had not been 
jerked out of balance or who, like young Tom 
Wainwright, were ready to resume old ways with 
the same eager boyishness as before. How should 
there be? No wonder, therefore, that this father 
left for his business with thankfulness in his heart 
and a joyful surprise. 

II 

There were several eye-openers in store for “ my 
boy Tom ” that morning, and all of them gave him 
a very new and wonderful insight into the ways and 
hearts of parents, jerking him into a realization of 
the fact, very vaguely appreciated up to the time 
of his getting into uniform, that a son, when his 
people happen to be the Wainwrights of the earth, 
occupies the star position in the house. 

He had left his civies in a condition of wild 
chaos and thus he expected, unimaginatively 
enough, to find them. Instead of which he discov- 
ered them, with a sort of shock, in the most perfect 
order. His socks and golf stockings had not only 


THE BLUE ROOM 


105 


been mended but rolled up separately and arranged 
in platoons in his drawers. His suits, brushed and 
ironed, hung primly in the closet, winter to the 
right, summer to the left. Shoes, treed and glis- 
tening, pointed their toes at him from a shelf. His 
modest collection of ties hung decora tively all across 
a bar. In fact, all his possessions, even his pipes, 
told the tale of tender attention and gave him a 
picture of his mother working over his things again 
and again in order to get something from them and 
to give something to him which is necessary to the 
maternal instinct. A queer moment for this hith- 
erto scatter-brained lad, who had given and taken 
lightly and never stopped to look for anything that 
was n’t on the surface. He chuckled at all this as- 
tounding neatness and wondered how long it would 
be before the old chaos reigned again, but, able now 
to understand the meaning behind it, he metaphor- 
ically took off all his hats to his mother in absolute 
unsheepish gratitude. “ Gee whiz,” he said, “ some 
Mother, and Martha ’s in on this too. I ’ll have to 
do something for them both.” And when finally he 
surveyed himself in pre-war clothes, having chucked 
his uniform into the farthest corner of a man-sized 
closet, the one ambition that loomed up at the back 
of his mind was to prove to the women of his fam- 
ily his deep sense of appreciation. All the fun to 
which he had looked forward like a school-boy on a 
holiday should be shared with these two who, dur- 
ing his absence, had shown their devotion in. the 
Madonna-like manner of women. 


106 


THE BLUE ROOM 


Whatever the war had succeeded in developing 
in other men who had escaped, it had awakened in 
the cheery Tom something which would make him 
both happy and miserable in his future life, — imag- 
ination. It had dug under that casual acceptance 
of things which belongs to youth and brought out 
the sensitive faculty of looking over the wall and 
putting himself in other people’s shoes. And this 
meant the end of his old detached manner of taking 
life and the supreme individualism and gross selfish- 
ness which is the prerogative of all young people. 
His two years of service added to his conscious 
nearness to death had raised a curtain that would 
never be lowered again. He had put his feet over 
the boundary line between undergraduatism and 
manhood and was thus able to get from all his 
things that were so neatly arranged the essence of 
those prayers that came to him like scent. . . 

He drove his father to the station and stood about 
with him, close, talking golf and banking in jerks, 
away back on the platform. He could go through 
the “ Well-well ” stuff with the nobs of the neigh- 
borhood some other time. He was like a young 
brother; he tried to be. But the grip that he gave 
to the banker’s hand and the glint that was in his 
eye when he said “ I ’ll meet you. Don’t forget 
our match now,” sent the old man up to the City 
with a warm feeling about the heart which nothing 
else could have achieved. Driving the car as 
though it were an aeroplane he went back to the 
house to show his mother what he thought about 


THE BLUE ROOM 107 

her. To anyone who had made a close study of 
youth in all its honesty and naive conceit it would 
have provided a vast amount of amusement to watch 
this boy in sudden realization of his potency, to see 
him under the new emotion of responsibility, the 
state of being answerable to his people for the 
proper and immediate discharge of expressed devo- 
tion which would clinch their happiness. It had 
been growing and taking shape ever since he got up. 
It put his chin high and puffed out his chest. It 
made him feel years older. It put the badge of 
high rank on his shoulders. All the same it came 
up against a huge diffidence and a worrying eager- 
ness to do it all without letting it be seen that he 
was conscious of the duty part of it. He did n’t 
knock on the door of her bedroom in the grown-up 
way. He deliberately banged up against it and 
shouted “ Mum ” as he had been in the habit of 
doing in the old days before dashing off to school. 

He won the old answer. He was betting on it. 
“ Oh Tom dear, do be careful,” — and went in 
laughing. 

Mrs. Wainwright had breakfasted in her room, 
after a night distressed by bouts of bronchial cough- 
ing. She had the inevitable appearance of the in- 
valid, and the manner of the ill person who has be- 
come unable to look at anything without turning 
it to herself. Her symptoms were the all absorb- 
ing facts. Her face was pale and her eyes tired and 
little blue veins marked her temples. But she had 
expected this visit and so had arranged herself on 


108 


THE BLUE ROOM 


the sofa at the foot of the bed in a new and becom- 
ing dressing gown. Her hair had been as carefully 
brushed and done up as though she were going to a 
dinner party. She wore several of her best rings. 
The room had been tidied and put in order under 
Martha’s energetic direction and the various vases 
had been filled with newly-cut flowers. There was 
something in this touch of maternal vanity and the 
desire to rise above invalidism and “ receive ” with 
consideration that made Tom feel that the days of 
his rowdy boyhood were a very long way behind 
them both. 

“ Rotten bad luck,” he said to himself with a 
feeling of almost feminine sympathy and went for- 
ward not as “ Tom-dear-do-be-careful ” as he had 
wanted to do, but as Tom the Man who had to be 
treated as such. “ How are you, mother,” he 
said, and knocked out his pipe on the creeper that 
grew up to the window sill. Always before he 
had smoked in that room as in every other and 
felled it with clouds of tobacco in the usual boy 
manner. 

“ Oh, don’t do that,” she said. “ You can smoke 
here if you like.” 

And this gave him his first chance. He went 
over to her and kissed her. “ Not now. I ’ve 
learnt a few things since I went away,” and had the 
infinite satisfaction of seeing that his point went 
home. 

After that, talking hard, about her things and not 
his own, he remained for a solid hour, although the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


109 


sun called him and he was consumed with a desire 
to get round to the garage and tinker on his car. 
He did n’t walk about the room either, taking things 
up and putting them down again, being there merely 
as a matter of duty. He sat tight in the same chair 
as though a willing fixture and to every one of her 
appeals not to waste his time paid no attention. It 
was a masterly piece of work, performed with the 
most sympathetic artfulness and without the small- 
est possible degree of filial condescension. His 
mother should see unmistakably that he liked to be 
with her, that he chose to be with her, that he in- 
sisted on being with her, that he would, in fact, 
rather be with her than with any other person 
under the sun. And she got it as he hoped that 
she would, ♦ and together they made that hour 
one of the triumphs of her life, — those rare, 
beautiful, maternal triumphs which so few 
mothers ever enjoy until their children have got 
children of their own and thus are able to appreciate 
the fine points of parenthood and to understand 
how deeply the small and apparently trivial things 
in the relations between child and parent count in 
the scheme of life. 

And not once during the whole of those sixty 
minutes did Tom permit himself to talk war or his 
part in it. He talked father, Martha, the black cat, 
the local gossip, servant stuff and home generally. 
He touched also on the future and the fact that he 
was going to knuckle down to work as soon as he 
had had a bit of a holiday. And then he got up 


110 


THE BLUE ROOM 


and apologized for staying so long and said : 
“ Cheerio, Mother. The house won’t be the same 
until you come down and show me what you ’ve 
done in the garden.” But he reserved his big point 
for the moment when he turned with his hand on 
the door. “ I ’ve never seen anything like the way 
you ’ve made my clothes look, Mum. What can I 
do to spoil you for a change ? ” 

He left behind him a quiver of electrical emotion 
which made his little mother clasp her hands to- 
gether and put up her face and say to herself, “ I 
have a good boy, a very good boy.” 

Ill 

Before going to the garage Tom decided to hunt 
up Martha, and, if he could work it in somehow 
with any luck, to say something to his kid sister 
which would give her also an inkling of the present 
state of his feelings. It was a far more difficult job 
than the one that he had just performed. It was 
easier to say things to a mother than to a sister any 
day. What he would have given a great deal to 
be able to do was quite out of the question. There 
was something about Martha now which made it 
impossible to march up to her, kiss her soundly and 
put in words any of those things that were in his 
mind, — bang out. Then too, the last two years 
had taken the kid part away from her. She had ac- 
quired that touch of dignity which made him hesi- 
tate to prove his affection in the old way by chuck- 
ing something at her, yanking her hair, chasing her 


THE BLUE ROOM 


111 


about the house and pinning her up against a wall 
until she cried Pax and looked humble. Absence 
and Anno Domini had made some new way neces- 
sary, — he did n’t quite know what. 

He heard her telephoning in his father’s den. 
With a perfectly natural self-consciousness he drew 
up short at the door and took several turns along 
the hall and back trying to get up a few sentences of 
most affectionate gratitude in which sloppiness 
should be totally absent. The things that came 
into his mind were too stilted to consider. He 
washed them out as idiotic. They would only make 
her laugh at him. Better be sloppy than pedantic. 
The sort of thing that was permissible between a 
brother and sister of her age and his must be sug- 
gested rather than put into so many blunt words, 
he felt. They were n’t Latins, able to emote with- 
out effort and revel in it. Their Anglo-Saxon 
blood and tradition boxed them in. He knew jolly 
well that she loved him, — there had been hero-wor- 
ship in her eyes the night of his return. And he 
knew that she knew he loved her because when she 
had flung her arms round his neck at the first sight 
of him he had held her frightfully tight and choked 
a little. At the same time all the rules of the game 
demanded some sort of spoken recognition of her 
loyalty to his mother and to himself and of the long 
drawn out anxiety which she had confessed to in 
her letters. . . . Great Scot, how was he to get it 
off his chest? 

Lie was inclined to continue on his way to the 


112 


THE BLUE ROOM 


garage and the self-indulgence of pottering at his 
engine. Manana. But the discipline which had 
been ground into him during the last two years 
brought him back to the door. “ No shirking,” he 
said to himself. “ Get it over. It ’s got to be 
done,” — and he went in. 

Sitting on one side of the big flat-topped desk, 
with her feet dangling above the floor, and her 
young profile silhouetted against a square of blue 
sky made by the open window, she was grasping the 
telephone in both hands and holding her daily con- 
versation with the grocer. Amazing to think that 
only the other day she was sliding after him down 
the banisters with bobbed hair and bloomers. 

“ How much do you say they are this morning ? 
Two cents more than yesterday? Then don’t put 
them on the list, Mr. Budel. We shall have to live 
on our own potatoes if you go on like this.” She 
threw a glance of welcome at Tom, whom she had 
been longing to see alone, and hurried to an end. 
“ Must you go on sending me that mussy looking 
sugar? . . . Very well then, do. But you or some- 
one will be responsible for driving the servants 
away, I tell you that. Oh, and now that my 
brother’s back — yes, last night — I must have 
some marmalade. . . .” 

“ Great work,” said Tom. On his father’s side 
of the desk there was that snapshot of himself taken 
in a funk hole by Pot Stevens, — the last he ever 
took. Good old Dad. 

“ And do you still like jam, Tom? ” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


113 


He ran his hand circularly over his diaphragm. 

“ Yes, strawberry, Mr. Budel. . . . ” 

“ And how about some of those almonds and 
raisins ? ” 

She made it so. It seemed like the old holidays 
again. “ And don’t forget the ginger ale.” 

“ Imported,” said Tom. 

She shook her head, murmured “ H. C. L.,” 
added the word “ domestic,” closed with a cheery 
“ Good morning,” and hung up. “ Now I ’m 
through,” she said and slid off the desk. He had on 
one of the shirts that she had mended. If it had 
been too tight under the arms then what would it 
be now ? He looked inches broader. She was glad 
that he had n’t had his hair cut by one of those bar- 
bers who ought to be allowed to shear nothing but 
sheep. How awful those poor boys looked with 
what appeared to be a toupee balanced on the tiptop 
of a head otherwise bald. Could anybody call him- 
self a barber because he owned a few pairs of clip- 
pers and reeked of onions ? She sensed that he had 
come to say something and longed for him to say 
it. 

And so there was an uncomfortable pause. 

“ Some room,” said Tom, striding about. He 
might have been talking to a junior officer. 

“ Yes. I love it.” 

“ You camp here now, I see.” 

“ I do mother’s job now that she can’t. I keep 
all the books here and the wages and all that. And 
when I telephone I ’m not overheard. The daily 


114 


THE BLUE ROOM 


wrangle with the grocer and butcher, trying to keep 
the bills down.” She laughed and spoke lightly 
in order to camouflage the slight unsteadiness in 
her voice. To have him back, — to see him doing 
precisely what she had dreamed that he would do, 
and look exactly as she had prayed that he might 
look! . . . Suppose she went over with a rush and 
put her face against his chest? Would that help? 

He met her eyes and drew up short. 

But she felt self-consciousness rise like a fog be- 
tween them, — and sat down. 

“How damned silly!” thought Tom. “If she 
were a girl I ’d met a week ago and proposed to 
before I could clap a hand over my mouth I ’d be 
talking poetry to her by this time in a chair only 
large enough for one.” He loaded and lighted his 
pipe, perched himself on the edge of the desk and 
sent out a cloud of protective smoke like a Zeppelin 
in trouble. 

“ Father looks great,” he said. 

“ He is,” said Martha. 

“ I ’d give a million if someone could put Mother 
right.” 

“ So would I.” 

“ How about our painting the old town a bit next 
week and seeing the best of the shows? ” 

“Oh, Tom, I’d love to!” 

“ Pick ’em out and let me have a list and I ’ll 
fix it.” “ Bad work,” he added inwardly. 

“ But have n’t you anyone else you ’d rather 
take? ” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


115 


Here was a chance ! He was going to say “ I ’d 
rather take you, old girl, than any other feller’s 
sister within a thousand miles,” but what he did say 
was, “ No, not just now,” and metaphorically of- 
fered himself for court-martial. 

But Martha, who knew brothers backwards and 
Tom like a book, had got by this all that she needed 
from him. Whatever he had managed to say about 
his shirts and however bookishly he had said it, it 
could n’t have conveyed half so eloquently the things 
he had come to tell her. In the meantime he was 
itching to use his hands on something, that she 
knew. And she was keeping him, she could see. 
So she got up, energetically threw several trades- 
men’s books into a drawer and slammed it hard. 

Tom jumped at the hint. “You’re busy,” he 
said. “ I ’ll push off.” 

Her fountain pen had rolled off the desk. They 
bent down together to pick it up. Their heads 
met with a bang. She snatched a quick kiss and 
they laughed. 

It was all over. There was nothing more re- 
quired. He knew that she knew and away went 
self-consciousness. 

“ I ’m going to function on my old engine,” he 
said. 

“ All right. I ’ll come and have a look at you 
when I ’ve got things going.” 

“ Fine.” 

And then Biddy, — obviously Connemara via 
Brooklyn, came in with a letter. 


116 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ From Mrs. Mortimer/’ she said. 

And as Martha took it her face flamed like a 
peony. 

Tom wheeled round. “ Oh, you know the Mor- 
timers, don’t you ? ” 

“ Yes,” she said. 

“ I ’ll introduce you to Bill when he comes home. 
Some Major ’s old Bill, my dear. The finest sol- 
dier in the Army.” 

“ Is he ? ” Luckily she was near enough to the 
desk to lean over it and put the blotting pad straight. 
Her secret was in her eyes. There ’d be a burst 
of brother stuff if he saw it there. 

“ Well, so long, young ’un.” 

And she was alone with the letter against her 
heart. But she kissed her hand to the closed door. 
Tom had paid her the priceless compliment of in- 
viting her to the theater and he had said what she 
most wanted to hear about Bill. 

A wonderful brother, Tom! 

IV 

She ran to the window and watched him go out. 
He swung by with his face alight and his shoulders 
back. The boy whom she had delighted to fetch 
and carry for and interrupt, tease and go about with, 
had grown into a man. She thrilled with pride at 
his fitness and strength. He gave her a sense of 
personal satisfaction at having had a share in the 
war, an intimacy with the Thing, the Menace, which 


THE BLUE ROOM 117 

had suddenly died, enabling the world to open its 
windows and begin to tidy up. 

And then, flooded with the emotional intimations 
that she had grown into a woman, she opened Mrs. 
Mortimer’s letter. It was beautiful writing, clear 
and large and flowing, suggestive of the type of 
woman who can wear a tiara without appearing to 
know it and manage a train without making men 
dance on hot bricks at her heels. “ My dear,” it 
ran, “ I want you to come to the top of the hill, 
where the Seven Sisters are, at three o’clock this 
afternoon, exactly three o’clock. My love. L. M.” 
That was all. There was nothing about the man 
who had haunted her dreams and filled her days 
with strange and wonderful thoughts that came to 
her like bars of music blown upon a breeze. There 
was no hint in these few equable lines that she was 
to see and speak to the man about whom she had 
woven the glamour of first love and whom she had 
protected with the armor of a girl’s prayers. Mrs. 
Mortimer had sent many such notes before during 
the two long years which were over. But this one 
had been written in such excitement and eagerness 
that it sent a quiver of expectation all through 
Martha as she read it. She got from it something 
that told her that she was to see Bill, not any longer 
as the Wainwright Kid, the big-eyed, inarticulate, 
girl to be treated as a flapper, but as a grown person 
who had earned the right to be taken seriously, a 
young Eve on the verge of womanhood, a com- 
petitor in life. 


118 


THE BLUE ROOM 


The note had been written by Mrs. Mortimer 
with Bill’s statement of his feelings still ringing in 
her ears. It was the first step in her campaign to 
bring Martha forward, to plan a meeting that should 
be accidental and romantic, up on the hill above the 
rolling country, under the arms of the seven trees 
that were a landmark for miles around. Her plan 
was to be taken by Bill up to this spot from which 
the old house and all its property could best be seen 
and leave him with a prepared excuse to be found 
by the girl whose picture he had painted as the Miss 
Respectable of his responsible years. Better that 
they should meet like that, she thought, applying all 
her feminine cunning to the fulfillment of her last 
ambition, alone and apparently by chance, than for- 
mally on the veranda with a tea table between them 
and the Commodore near by with a tongue that could 
not be guaranteed — ogling and roguish and full of 
innuendoes. Let Bill fall into the belief that he was 
choosing for himself and not being coerced into a 
cut and dried scheme. Self-consciousness would 
thereby be lessened in his plan of attack, if it came 
to that, and Mrs. Mortimer was gambling that it 
would, knowing Martha and having listened to Bill. 
There was about all this a predestination that made 
a marriage inevitable, but Bill, simple for all his 
sophistication, must not get any inkling of the fact 
that he was being “ worked.” It might make him 
refuse, like a horse ridden at a hurdle. There was 
no time to be wasted in mistakes. Mrs. Mortimer 
thanked her stars that no clever manipulation was 


THE BLUE ROOM 


119 


needed so far as Martha was concerned. The child 
had unconsciously confessed, — the rest was merely, 
under the circumstances, a matter of propinquity. 
Thank God it was springtime, when from every 
bird and bush the urge to love and mate was diffused 
into the air. Everything was on the side of those 
two old schemers whose one remaining effort was 
to secure the future of the family. The possible 
danger of the Blue Room was minimized by 
Martha’s love. 

“ Walk into my parlor,” said the spider to the 
fly .... 

Going to her side of the desk, with all its evi- 
dences of domestic management, Martha wrote her 
acceptance to the invitation. “ Dearest Mrs. Morti- 
mer, expect me at three o’clock, — exactly three 
o’clock to the second. Thank you. What a lovely 
day!” 

And having sent it out to Carlo Cazazza, cousin 
of one of the Wops whose mowing machine clacked 
beneath her window, Martha stood for a moment in 
the middle of her father’s den with life at full flood 
in her veins, ready and eager to meet the exquisite 
and significant experiences, strange and wonderful 
and intimate, which had arranged themselves like 
phantoms all through the vague years of her girl- 
hood. Her thoughts danced wildly in front of her 
like fairies through a wood of silver birches. They 
led the way to the man whose photograph had been 
slipped beneath her pillow every single night for two 
tormenting years, — the man she had waved to as 


120 


THE BLUE ROOM 


he had gone away like a knight and waved to as he 
came back with the laurels of victory round his 
head. They beckoned her to follow them out of 
dreams into reality, singing as they went. . . . 

But she dared not move. With a thumping heart 
she stood very still and fearful and tremulous. He 
might not like her. He might think that she was 
just a homely little person, looking wide-eyed at the 
world as a newly fledged bird does. The fact that 
she was one of the quiet ones who did domestic 
things might bore him. He might prefer, especially 
now, fresh from active service, the nippy little de- 
butante, with a well-planned disclosure of bosom 
and calves, who talked like the front page of a news- 
paper, who darted like a fish, or, when jazz was ab- 
sent, sat about like an ancient sphinx in lepidopter- 
ous attitudes. If she had had a close friend to 
whom she could have poured out all her doubts and 
fears she would have added something else. She 
would have said that if Bill didn’t like her she 
would still keep his photograph under her pillow and 
go to the grave a spinster. Coming from a girl of 
not quite nineteen whose chance to see and mix with 
men had been small owing to the responsibilities 
thrown upon her by a constantly ill mother and the 
fact that she lived beyond the line of the ordinary 
commuter, this statement would probably have been 
received with the usual grain of salt. The first love 
of most girls is a mere preliminary canter round the 
ring. They force themselves to fall in love as they 
force themselves upon the inadequate dancing space 


THE BLUE ROOM 


121 


at the fashionable hotel, there to be jostled and 
wounded by a jam of wriggling lunatics. It is the 
desire to be smart, the force of example, the ina- 
bility to refrain from imitation. They can be in 
love with several men at the same time. It is all a 
part of the inevitable growing pains of youth. But 
Martha was not in love. She was one of those odd 
little girls who are constitutionally unable to be 
merely in love. The Joan of Arc stuff was in her 
blood, and there was poetry in her soul. She had 
really and truly and greatly given all her heart to 
this man. He was her hero, the epitome of her 
dreams and desires. Already he had had three 
years of her freshest life. He had been taken into 
the inner chapel of her spirit. She had given him 
the concentrated essence of devotion that had in it 
the element of motherhood that belongs to everlast- 
ing love, and without which marriage has a pretty 
poor chance of working right. She was, if you 
like, old-fashioned. She had been born out of her 
time. And beyond everything she had not under- 
gone, owing to family circumstances, the shallow- 
ing process of a modern girl's school. What she 
was she had remained, unthumbed, unsystemized, 
unsophisticated, — Martha herself. More herself 
for the constant association with a father who took 
life seriously though with eager joy and a mother 
whose duties she had had to take upon her shoulders. 
Miss Respectable according to all Bill's innate ideas. 


122 


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V 

Biddy flung open the door of the den. 

“ Humphrey’s killin’ Tony,” she screamed. 
“ He ’s killin’ him, I tell yer,” and rushed out again, 
skidding on the rugs in the hall, upsetting a large 
pale vase that was relegated to sticks and umbrellas 
and sending the sleek cat upstairs with her tail in 
the air and every hair on end. 

Accustomed to the daily dramatization of small 
events which is ingrained in the childlike nature of 
the Irish, Martha followed the girl calmly into the 
garden. If Humphrey O’Brien was playfully chas- 
ing Tony Caruso with a wood chopper, and being 
the bigger man he frequently indulged in this hobby 
in his many hours of leisure, that was probably 
all there was to worry about. 

But when Martha joined the still screaming maid 
on the terrace above the sloping rock-garden what 
she saw was this. The bandy-legged Tony, dodg- 
ing and jumping like a squirrel, was frantically es- 
caping from the stones hurled at him by the Irish- 
man who, with a face scarlet with rage, was run- 
ning him hard. Frightened out of his wits, the 
little Italian swung behind bushes, scampered up the 
incline of lawn, leaped from the ground with a hand 
clapped upon a wounded spot, turned to the slope 
that ran down to a wide potato patch, caught his 
foot in a tussock of grass and went rolling all the 
way down to the bottom. Here, hopeless and in a 
dire funk, he sent out shrill staccato sounds of oper- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


123 


atic terror, while the chauffeur, flatfooted and 
flabby from little exercise and the habit of eating 
everything in sight, bore turgidly down upon him. 
And as he landed his first kick in the ribs of his vic- 
tim, Biddy’s scream was taken up from the apple 
orchard by the cook, from the scullery window by 
the kitchen maid, and from behind the woodpile by 
Leonardo Benvenuto, whose loyalty to his friend 
did not urge him with any success to desert his 
policy of valorous discretion. 

It was a most enjoyable break in the monotony 
of the day’s routine for all, — except Tony. 

And then Martha did things. With the sure- 
footedness of a mountain goat she leaped from 
stone to stone of the rock-garden, made small work 
of lawn and slope, and finally flung herself full tilt 
against the bulky chauffeur, whose right foot was 
raised to kick. Down he went like a log and there she 
stood like a young Diana, the blubbering Wop on his 
back on one side, the blaspheming Irishman full- 
sprawl on the other. 

Startled out of his oily concentration by all these 
female screams Tom had darted out of the garage 
in time to see this gallant work, and in a flick of an 
eyebrow had joined the group, with smudges all 
over his grinning face. “ Pretty good stuff,” he 
said. 

“ All right, Tom,” said Martha. “ Leave this to 
me. I ’m used to it. . . . Now then, get up, you 
two. A nice sight you make, I must say. I don’t 
want any explanations. I can guess what hap- 


124 


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pened. You called Tony a dirty little Wop and lie 
said that most Wops had to be dirty through fighting 
the Germans while the Irish looked on. And you 
had to prove what a fine fighting man you are by 
going after somebody half your size. If this hap- 
pens again, Humphrey, you go, quick. Is that 
understood? And as for you, Tony, cut more 
grass and do less talking and you won’t have so 
many dramas to act to your wife. That ’s all I 
have to say, — this time.” 

She treated them like children, and they took it, 
though differently. The Wop rubbed his hairy arm 
over his face and brought forth a sheepish smile. 
He thanked his patron saint that Missa Martha had 
come to his rescue. By the grace of God he could 
go on cutting the grass, which meant a roof over 
his wife and food for his ever-increasing brood. 
He had not dared to say as much to thata dog Irish- 
man as the younga lady. He could laugh. So he 
slanted his shoulder and murmured things and with 
a twinkle in his brown eyes went off, plucking high 
weeds on his way back. O’Brien got up slowly, 
with his lower jaw stuck out, humiliated to the very 
quick to have been found at full length by the son 
of the house to whom he had already been telling 
fairy tales about his great courage. “ If I ’d a’ bin 
over there I ’d ’a shown ’em somethin’, sure.” The 
usual stuff. He wagged his head from side to side 
and spat, after the most appalling preliminaries, to 
show that he was as good as annybuddy ; and started 
to whistle while he dusted the dry earth from his 


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125 


breeches. It was all very clever, according to his 
bog-headed way of thinking, and by the time that 
he had lurched halfway up the hill towards the 
house he was accepting as a fact the unholy lie 
that he meant to spread about after he had done, — 
Irish to the backbone. 

Tom and Martha made their way back arm in 
arm. 

“ A big order, — running a house these days, 
young ’un.” 

She laughed. “ I should think so. Fine train- 
ing as a supervisor of a lunatic asylum. Honestly, 
if things get much worse we shall have to be our 
own servants and rely on community kitchens. 
Wages go up as loyalty and intelligence go down, 
and why does a man like O’Brien have to behave 
himself when all he has to do is to walk into the next 
village and get another job with higher wages? 
And do you think he ever condescends to work on 
the engine if anything’s wrong with it? Not he. 
Away goes the car to the repair shop and up comes 
a nice big bill. He only washes the car and cleans 
the windows on Saturdays so that it looks smart 
for church for himself and the maids.” She pulled 
up short in what was about to develop into a long 
and detailed account of the whole servant problem 
and laughed again. “ I talk like an old married 
woman, don’t I ? And now I ’d better go up and 
put mother out of suspense. She’s probably ex- 
pecting a gruesome story of murder after all that 
screaming.” 


126 


THE BLUE ROOM 


And away she ran with a backward wave, — the 
note from Mrs. Mortimer burning a hole in her 
pocket. 

VI 

Mrs. Wainwright’s mood when Martha made 
her report ivas that of every other woman of her 
type under similar circumstances. A born house- 
wife who had been in complete control until her 
bronchial tubes had gone back upon her, she bit- 
terly resented the fracas that had occurred in the 
garden. Those screams damaged the dignity of her 
home and, if there had been any near neighbors, 
would prove to them a certain inefficiency for which 
she was not responsible. Luckily and naturally, 
however, there was mixed with this feeling one of 1 
extreme self-satisfaction that no such outbreak 
could ever have occurred had she been at the wheel. 
She was able, therefore, to listen to Martha’s swift 
account with sufficient tolerance to enable her to 
keep a curb upon her tongue. Martha was a good 
girl. She was doing her best. She was inexperi- 
enced, of course. The gift of controlling such ut- 
terly different people as the Irish and the Italians 
was not given to everyone. She was carrying on 
with an amount of pluck and unselfishness that was 
remarkable in one so young and so full of life. To 
criticize her efforts unfavorably would be unkind 
and ungrateful. Mrs. Thompson’s Enid, it must be 
remembered, played bridge all day and danced all 
night. And Mrs. Warner’s Vera commuted to 


THE BLUE ROOM 


127 


New York every morning to lunch at the Ritz and 
fox-trot at the Plaza. And both would have fainted 
at the mere idea of giving an order to the grocer. 
These facts must be borne in mind. Martha was 
indeed an exceptional girl, a chip of the old 
block. ... So Mrs. Wainwright made allowances. 
She simply clicked her tongue and shook her head 
and murmured something about “ these dreadful 
people.” And the incident passed, with no small 
credit to the lady who fretted terribly at being 
temporarily deposed. 

All the same the little interview between the 
mother and the daughter was not allowed to end 
as well as it began. The trouble was the old one of 
Mrs. Mortimer and her friendship. It cropped up 
again as it had often cropped up before during the 
last three years. 

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Wainwright, putting aside 
a tin thing with a tube in it out of which she had 
been absorbing benzoin, — its pungent smell filled 
the very precise room, — “I think you had better 
mark the new towels this afternoon. Tom will 
need them, and it ’s a nice day for marking towels.” 

Martha repressed her laugh and also her urgent 
desire to ask what the weather had to do with that 
all-important job. “ All right, Mother,” she said. 

“ Bring them in here about three o’clock and I ’ll 
show you how I like them done.” 

“ Three o’clock, — exactly three o’clock,” — 
with the hope of meeting him. 

“ Won’t six o’clock do as well, Mother? ” 


128 


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“ No, dear. I shall be fresh from a nap then and 
I can give my mind to it. Father will be here at 
six o’clock to tell me all about the game with Tom. 
It must be three o’clock.” 

“ The glass is set fair, Mother. It ’ll be just as 
good for towels at three o’clock to-morrow.” 

Mrs. Wainwright looked up sharply. She was 
unaffected by the slight touch of humor. Her an- 
cestors had been of the Dr. Johnson variety of Eng- 
lish and she had inherited a certain contempt for 
what she called mere humorous persons, as he did. 
She was quick to suspect that the white-haired lady 
who had no right to be so beautiful or so urbane 
after the sort of life that she had led, was at the 
back of this little argument. That absurd old man, 
too, with his wild record. They were both quite 
unfit for the society of a nice girl. Tom had men- 
tioned Major Mortimer. Everyone had heard the 
gossip about him and his affairs with women. . . . 
At the same time something had been coming over 
Martha, — a sudden closing-up, a quick flash of un- 
expected independence, — which warned her that 
she was on ground marked “ No Trespassers,” — a 
startling and disconcerting notice for a mother to 
come up against. 

“I would much prefer to-day, dear,” she said, 
going carefully. “ And surely you have n’t made 
any engagements to take you away from home on 
the first day of Tom’s return.” 

“ Hardly away from home, Mother, Only across 
the brook.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


129 


Then it was Mrs. Mortimer once more, in spite 
of all that had been said. What could Martha, who 
was so sensible and forthright, see in this always 
half smiling woman about whom seemed to cling 
the echo of applause as it did about a retired actress 
of many dead triumphs? What queer influence 
was being exerted on her girl to draw her so fre- 
quently into that atmosphere of banished royalty? 
To the perfectly direct and simple Mrs. Wainwright 
to whom life was as cut and dried a thing as a 
draught board, these Mortimers, who had moved 
with such an adventurous disregard for the conven- 
tional rules from square to square, seemed to be 
rather dangerous people, flippant, grotesque, freak- 
ish and neurotic, — almost foreign. It was a con- 
stant source of amazement and anxiety to her that 
Martha with her traditions and example could bring 
herself to like them. It seemed to prove the exist- 
ence of a kink somewhere. There was in it, in- 
deed, something as unexplainable to her as there 
would have been to a New England Baptist Minis- 
ter whose impeccable wife showed an irresistible 
desire to fox-trot with a professional dancer from a 
Broadway cabaret, — a lack of fastidiousness, a dis- 
regard of hygiene almost, that was very strange. 
“ We are simple people,” she said to herself, over 
and over again, “ who work hard and are honest 
and have no shams. We fear God and keep our 
powder dry. Martha is essentially one of us, think- 
ing the same thoughts, striving to the same ends, 
eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, 


130 


THE BLUE ROOM 


made on the same model. There must be some un- 
natural and unhealthy magnet that is drawing her 
into constant association with that woman who is as 
much out of place in the everyday life of America 
as a nude bronze in a collection of Massachusetts 
china.” . . . Poor little good lady! If she had 
been able to imagine that the key to her puzzle was 
Love the revolutionist, she would have needed the 
immediate services of Church as well as Science! 

But, — the time had gone when she could take 
a stand and say, “ Martha, I will not have this and 
I will not have that,” and that new time had arrived, 
so bewildering to a mother, which had brought with 
it the inevitable notice board of “ Private Road, — 
no trespassers.” 

She sat confused and nonplussed. The child 
was fearless and frank. She offered no deceit. 
She intended to go across the brook, — and the 
towels would not be marked at three o’clock, nice 
as the day was for that important piece of domestic- 
ity. 

“ Very well, dear,” she said. “ Have your own 
way. All I trust is that you will not live to regret 
it.” 

Martha knew very well that this enigmatical re- 
mark, hard to bear, referred to her friendship with 
the white-haired lady and not to her postponement 
of towel marking. If her mother had been on her 
feet, well and strong, she would have let herself go 
and taken up the cudgels on behalf of the woman 
who was so wonderful as the mother of Bill and 


THE BLUE ROOM 


131 


whom she admired and esteemed as a sweet and 
rather pathetic figure, united to her by their mutual 
love for the returned soldier. But invalidism 
raised a protective trench round her mother and she 
held her peace. She simply told herself that her 
mother was prejudiced and, by the taking up of a 
book, took her dismissal without anger although 
with the natural impatience of youth. She liked 
the Mortimers and found them charming and un- 
expected. She was fascinated by their warm old 
house which reeked with history. She was ap- 
pealed to by their wanting to know her and by 
their graciousness and manners and, above all, she 
went to them for the sense of comfort and con- 
solation that she needed as one who loved without 
return. 

“ All mothers are like this, I suppose,” she 
thought, and went on to the next job, with the song 
of fairies in her heart. 


VII 

“ Come on, Tom.” 

“ Coming, Dad.” 

The boy swarmed upstairs for a pipe and to stick 
his head into his mother’s room for a moment. It 
was a beastly shame that she was caged in at such 
a time. 

So Jonathan Wainwright went out to wait in the 
garden. His new suit of golf clothes made him 
feel a trifle self-conscious. He had never taken the 
trouble to dress himself up. It was rather nice 


132 


THE BLUE ROOM 


though. And after all Brown, Jones, and Robinson 
got away with it. . . . 

The car was at the door with Humphrey in 
charge full of cutlets and potatoes, his face cleaner 
than usual and the same old grin at the corners of 
his mouth. He was a different man when the men 
of the house were about. But the belt of bushes to 
the left of the house made a good screen, and behind 
this the man of fifty-two, most of whose good 
muscle had been devoted to business, slipped out of 
view and made thirty-six attempts to touch his toes, 
— tummy a bit in the way. Curse fifty-two. 

The strange trickle of excitement that he had 
taken with him to town was strong enough now to 
send sparks from the tips of his fingers. ... A dozen 
times during his morning’s work, pushing everyone 
hard and putting an amount of pace into his staff 
that left them a little breathless, the trickle had made 
him leap to his feet, forget what he was dictating, 
grip an imaginary driver, take a firm and proper 
stance in the middle of his room and beat a meta- 
phorical ball clean through the office window to 
bounce from one Gargantuan building to another 
and fall away down into the narrow slit that called 
itself a street. . . . He had been early for the home- 
ward train, but this thing in his veins, playing up 
and down his spine, had sent him down the steps to 
the Lower Level of the swarming Grand Central 
like a boy let out of school. He was stealing an 
afternoon for the first time in memory. It was 
epoch-making. . . . Time after time on the journey 


THE BLUE ROOM 


133 


through the parterres of the City the words of his 
paper had slid off the sheet in a heap and he had 
been surcharged with a passionate urge to sway 
along to the engine room and give the driver a 
thumping bribe to send the train into the air. It 
was a gorgeous day with a warm sun and a sky as 
clear as crystal. Was he going to be able to keep 
his end up against that boy of his who was so fit and 
confident and well oiled and prove that although he 
was now a man of fifty-two, office-stiff and unexer- 
cised, he had enough kick left to drive as far and 
take the hills without panting? It was absurd. A 
man could n’t have worked like a traction engine for 
thirty-five years and do those things. He must 
take two strokes and follow round, halving a few 
holes at the best. . . . Amazing to think that this 
was the lad who, apparently a few years ago, had 
looked up to him with round admiring eyes as one 
unbelievably out of reach, — the lad he had carried 
on his back, lugged along on a sled and left after 
many holidays on the steps of the prep school, a 
sturdy open-faced boy putting up a grim fight to 
keep a stiff upper lip. How many yesterdays had 
slipped away since he had heard the incoherent pat- 
ter that used to be called prayers and issued the ul- 
timatum in his den to the little scamp with the dirty 
face and a hole in the seat of his pants? . . . Hey, 
Hey, Hey, — twenty-five and fifty-two, — and 
here was this Tom of his, over whom he and his 
wife had had many fits because of such crises as 
whooping cough and measles and broken ribs, fresh 


134 


THE BLUE ROOM 


from rubbing shoulders with death and shell shock 
and trench fever, to all of which they had sent him 
forth with pride. . . . Amazing, — and very good. 

It was behind the bushes that Martha found old 
man Wainwright pretending to be deep in the study 
of rose bugs. She straightened his slightly cock- 
eyed tie and gave him a kiss. “ Show him the way 
round, Dad,” she said. 

“ Impossible, honey, — unless he ’s off his game.” 

“ Well, he will be. He has n’t seen a club for 
ages.” 

“ There ’s something in that ! . . . But I ’ve only 
had Sundays all my life. I ’m a boob at the game. 
Walk round with us, Pansy face? ” 

“ I ’d have loved to, Dad, but I have to go and see 
Mrs. Mortimer.” 

“ Have to ? Is it an order ? ” 

Mother had been talking. “ No, but I like her, 
and . . . .” She did n’t dare to trust herself. 

The parental arm went round the young shoul- 
ders. “ Well, go easy, honey. It would be imper- 
tinent to interfere, — you, as trustable and full of 
sense as your mother, and that ’s going some. 
The only thing is, is n’t this good lady a bit out of 
our scope? She won’t unsettle my little girl, will 
she, with her stories of society triumphs, and all 
that ? That ’s the only thing that worries me a 
little. You can’t go on the bat and do what you ’re 
doing at the same time, you know. I wish you 
could, sometimes, when I see some of those elderly 
kids get on the train, dressed up to the eyes, — and 


135 


THE BLUE ROOM 

then I look at them again and draw comparisons and 
I don’t know what I wish.” 

Martha put her hands on his chest and looked him 
full in the eyes. “Have you ever heard me 
grumble ? ” 

“ No, honey.” 

“ Do you ever think you will ? ” 

“ No, honey.” 

“ Then what ’s the idea, Dad ? When I ’m sick 
of trying to be as much like you and Mother as I 
can that ’ll be the time for me to cut loose and paint 
my face. And before I do I ’ll give you a month’s 
notice so that you can look out for somebody else 
to do my job. Is that fair?” She held out her 
hand. 

And he caught it and yanked her into his arms 
and kissed her. He was a lucky man in his chil- 
dren. He hadn’t worked to the almost total ex- 
tinction of muscle and all that keeps it up for noth- 
ing. And he said so, stumblingly and rather 
shyly, _ the slight, frank, flowerlike thing in his 
arm s, — warmly, the fourth wall of both being wide 
open for once. “ And don’t think,” he wound up, 
“that because Tom’s in the limelight he’s the 
only hero in the house. He is n’t, my dear, and 
don’t I know it! There ought to be a string of 
ribbons on your chest and there are when I look 

at you.” . 

And a wonderful look gleamed in the girl s eyes 
and a little tremble ran over her lips. But she 
laughed as usual as she said, to bring things back to 


136 THE BLUE ROOM 

normal, “ We ’re a nice little family, we are, are n’t 
we, Dad? ” 

And out came Tom. 

VIII 

Martha waved after the car. 

The young soldier and the man with white hair 
and many lines looked like brothers that afternoon. 
Good fighters, both. 

She went upstairs. Tom’s whisper on his way to 
the car made her as proud of him as of anything 
that he had done, and gave her an almost blinding 
insight into his newly developed imaginative side. 
“ I ’m going to be off my game. Dad ’s got to win 
this time. He needs the tonic.” 

This, the little emotional talk with her father and 
her own pulsing excitement at the prospect of see- 
ing and speaking to Bill Mortimer made the inti- 
macy and quietude of her own room desirable and 
necessary. It was good, as it had always been 
good, to shut life out sometimes and stand hedged-in 
privately in the small oasis where she could be and 
look and think her very own self among her very 
own things. Here she could let herself down, loosen 
the strings that had always to be at concert pitch and 
be precisely as her mood made her feel. At that mo- 
ment her mood was composed of several emotions, 
— joy at the happiness of having Tom back, su- 
preme pride in her father’s recognition of her efforts 
and a strange sense of fear at what the meeting on 
the hill might lead to. It was the last of these that 


THE BLUE ROOM 


137 


hurried her to her glass and caused her to examine 
herself with a new sort of criticism. If she were at 
last to be put to the test to which all her dreams had 
led, and she wanted this unendurably, could she meet 
it with any hope? . . . 

Deep down under all her capability and steadi- 
ness there was the vague urgency for passion and 
romance, the love-hunger of a girl trembling 
on the edge of womanhood, something that sent the 
blood flying to her cheeks but left her unashamed. 
She was loved by father and mother and Tom. She 
had the supreme assurance of being trusted and re- 
lied upon. She could imagine no home that of- 
fered her greater security, a dearer anchorage. 
But her secret estimate of life was incomplete with- 
out just that one human being who needed the touch 
of her, to whom she was the one dominating fact, 
who could be drawn by her magnet from the center 
of a crowd, and to whom she could answer with the 
whole strength and steadfastness of a soul utterly 
delivered up. And this meant that while she stood 
in the heart of a home she was homeless because 
only with Bill could she win the completion that 
made home of wherever he was. Untrifled with 
and unfrittered, the vague urgency was a stronger 
one for being concentrated. Bill or no one was her 
watchword, and it rang through her body, like the 
reverberation of a bell. . . . 

She saw a slight young figure, not tall and not 
short; held well, with straight back and shoulders 
set square; an oval face with large wide-apart eyes 


138 THE BLUE ROOM 

like those of a deer and with the same straight soft 
look; a nose that showed character and sensitive- 
ness ; a large full-lipped mouth with a tendency to 
laughter; fair hair in which there were touches of 
bronze. Nothing arresting and beautiful as she 
would have liked; a good deal, in fact, like that of 
hundreds of other girls of her class and breeding, 
health and cheeriness and an unpreventable normal- 
ity all about her, unmistakably of the country. 
Nothing either romantic or picturesque, but tidy 
and neat and even ordinary. . . . But what she 
failed to see was the spring-look of girlhood, the 
white fire of youth, the glory that makes all young 
things the masters of life, the freshness that be- 
longs to the morning. . . . 

So she turned away dissatisfied and humble. 
She would never do. “ A smudge of a thing,” she 
told herself, “ not a bit like the sort of girl that he 
could love.” But with quick deft fingers she started 
to re-do her hair and presently, everything going 
wrong, to change her frock, instinctively entering 
into the competition of Eve, hope seeing a star and 
listening love hearing the rustling of a wing. Not 
daring to give herself a final look of scrutiny for 
fear that she might turn coward and stay away, she 
stood for a moment with the photograph pressed to 
her lips passionately, all-desiring, • — and fled. 

Past mother’s room on tiptoe, — her nap was so 
important; down the stairs with a complete familiar- 
ity with those that creaked, across the hall that was 
as supremely conservative as the rest of the house, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


139 


and out into the sun, — warm and electrical. The 
scent of spring met her and the sweet smell of new- 
cut grass. The petals of apple blossoms volplaned 
in the light breeze. Birds piped and bees went 
hunting with the indefatigable optimism that be- 
longs to them, and to collectors of old furniture. 
With a trained eye on the borders which those two 
slipshod Wops were never loath to miss, down she 
went to the road, and over this expensive item to the 
wood whose red carpet was alive with sprouting 
green. And then out into the sparkling open to the 
bridge across the brook which divided her father’s 
property from the old Mortimer place, — lingering 
a little and depressed. 

At three o’clock, exactly three o’clock, she climbed 
the hill on which the Seven Sisters stood grouped 
affectionately and conscious of being seen the year 
round, bare or leaf-laden, from far and near. 

Mrs. Mortimer was unpunctual. She had ex- 
pected to find the white-haired lady standing, a 
gracious figure, cut clear against the sky. But it 
would be helpful to be alone for a little, to draw in 
the air. She went slowly towards the bench be- 
neath the trees, the old meeting place. A crowd of 
memories rose to meet her. How often they had 
sat there, hand in hand, those two, the woman whose 
life was all behind her and the girl who had not 
yet broken through the hoop, and in long silences 
listened figuratively to the roar of guns which put 
the lives of their two men in constant jeopardy. 
How often they had whispered of what they would 


140 


THE BLUE ROOM 


do and give up if only God saw fit to let these two 
men off and send them back safe and well. How 
often their united prayers had gone up from that 
little hill like a thin trickle of smoke to the gate of 
Heaven. . . . 

The virile undergrowth had covered the path that 
her feet had made and she went forward with hardly 
a sound. But a twig snapped, and someone, lying 
full stretch with his hands under his head, sat up 
quickly and watched her come, — Miss Respectable. 

It was Bill. 

And down below, the white-haired lady, having 
played her first card in the last and biggest of her 
schemes, returned to her garden, smiling. 

IX 

“ The flower of a girl, with the dew on her and 
a morning hymn in her eyes, — all to myself, to 
treat right and play the good old game by, and a 
young Bill and a tiny Lylyth, the country year in and 
year out, and home. ,, . . . Those were the words 
that he had used to Teddy Jedburgh in his rooms 
the night of his return when he had confessed to 
the prodigal son’s longing to indulge in an orgy of 
sentimental reconstruction. . . . And here stood 
the Wainwright Kid, the memory of whose wel- 
coming smile still rang like a little bell in his 
soul. 

Bill scrambled to his feet and put up his hand 
to take off the hat that was lying in the grass. 

“ You came to meet Mother, but she had to go 


THE BLUE ROOM 141 

back to the house for something. How do you do? 
I m awfully glad to see you. Will you wait until 
she comes up again? Do sit down somewhere. 
On this bit of rock. It’s dry. . . What on 
earth was he saying? If this had been Susie Hatch 
with her free and easy way, or Jeanne Dacoral with 
her gamin stuff and her comic nose that was as ar- 
tificially white as a marshmallow, or any of the 
other little things of the stage and semi-society who 
had made his rooms their happy hunting ground, 
there would not have been any of this ludicrous con- 
straint about him. He knew their language and 
their way of looking at things, what alone was cal- 
culated to amuse them, City pigeons, supreme ego- 
tists all. But this child-woman, with eyes as clean 
and sparkling as the waters of a trout stream, who 
stood as erect as a daffodil, disconcertingly digni- 
fied .. . this young country thing who had 
emerged from girlhood but was still a girl, who had 
no tricks, who didn’t burst, open-mouthed, into 
meaningless laughter or a greeting of the latest 
slang, but who remained, very quiet and friendly, 
supremely simple, meeting his eyes fully, smil- 
ing. . . . 

He had told his people that when he met Miss 
Respectable, if ever he did, he must translate him- 
self and even think in different words, — and here 
she stood like another and a baby sister of those 
seven trees. Good God, it was going to be diffi- 
cult. ... It is n’t to be supposed that never on his 
way through the good old days had he had any 


142 


THE BLUE ROOM 


dealings with young women of his own class, — 
that he had clung entirely to the stables and the 
stage. It came easier to him to herd with the nat- 
urally unnatural little people of these sets than with 
the unnaturally natural products of wealth and so- 
ciety. It called for less effort and he had been 
born lazy. He preferred not to work if he could 
help it and to be amused rather than to be amusing. 
He had taken dozens of the Miss Respectables into 
dinner all over the world and to dances and all that 
in the usual way, but they were the sophisticated 
Miss Respectables who would have taken the term 
as the worst kind of opprobrium and turned an icy 
shoulder. They were not his own idea of Miss Re- 
spectable, dug out from under a pile of years from 
one of early idealisms, epitomizing just such a girl 
as Martha Wainwright with her tradition and en- 
vironment and example and responsibility and dig- 
nity and simplicity — monumental and unconscious 
simplicity, — who was as much of the country as 
apple blossoms and lilies of the valley, — and here 
she stood, come true, a living dream, a thing of 
thought created into flesh and blood, a new Gala- 
tea. ... It was a big, startling, uneasy, emotional 
moment for Bill, who was going to be a good boy 
now. 

And when she said “ Thank you ” and sat down 
on the chosen stone, patterned with the patches of 
sunlight that came through the branches, he did n’t 
lie at her feet and gaze up at her as was his wont; 
he sat some little distance away and nursed his 


THE BLUE ROOM 143 

knees, hunting about the stretch of valley for some- 
thing to say, and say right. 

And the thing that Martha hoped above all others 
was that he could n’t hear the thumping of her 
heart. 

It was a difficult silence to break. 

Martha made a tremendous effort. “ Tom has 
been telling us about you,” she said. 

Her brother ! It had n’t occurred to him all that 
time. The boy assumed a sudden importance. 
“ Good chap, Tom Wainwright. Steady and re- 
liable, born soldier. His cheerfulness made him 
worth an immense amount to the regiment.” He 
didn’t know that he was capable of talking stuff 
like that. . . . Sweet thing. She had eyes like a 
deer, and charming little wrists. Go easy, now. 

“ He said those things about you.” 

“ Did he? That was nice of him.” 

If only the photograph could have smiled like 
that ! . . . “ He ’s playing golf with father this 
afternoon.” It was very handy to have Tom. 

“ Hope he ’ll play with me. There was n’t a 
man out this morning.” Would there ever be that 
light in her eyes when she talked about him ? What 
on earth had his mother meant last night when she 
had said that her mind was a blank? Wasn’t 
Martha a little pal of hers? He had described this 
very girl in every detail. It was perfectly amazing. 

“ He ’ll be at home every day,” she said. 

“ Great. I ’ll hike him out.” 

After which, Tom having been used to bridge the 


144 


THE BLUE ROOM 


first surprise, things began to go a 'little more 
smoothly. Bringing all her pluck to her rescue, and 
all that she had acquired of self-restraint to the pre- 
vention of any signs of the excitement that surged 
over her, Martha managed to talk about the weather 
and the country and the Seven Sisters and the Mor- 
timer house. It was well and splendidly done, al- 
most amazing in one who had had no training in so- 
cial camouflage, in the art of making bricks with 
straw. Had Mrs. Mortimer been in the position 
of eavesdropping she would have conferred upon 
her protegee the Order of Social Merit. All that 
Bill had to do was to interject the necessary 
“ Reallys ” and “ Yes, indeeds ” to make things al- 
most easy. And this he did, finding new 4 points 
to admire in this charming child who babbled so un- 
affectedly and who more and more fitted into the 
empty niche in his mind which the reaction of war 
had made it so vital to fill. 

It was an epoch-making afternoon for them both, 
— the girl of first love, and the man who believed 
that he had frittered love away but wanted to re- 
spect and possess. And finally, the shadows length- 
ening, it was she who got up to go home, duties call- 
ing. And she, the steadier of the two, although 
the beating of her heart seemed to echo among the 
trees, who held out her hand to say good-by, 
triumphant and despairing in never once having 
said a single thing to help her cause, or give an ink- 
ling to her emotions. But there was something to 
build on in the grip that he gave her hand and in 


THE BLUE ROOM 145 

his stumble of words. “ You were the last to wave 
me away and the first to wave me back. When can 
I see you again ? ” 

And as she went over the bridge that divided the 
two properties, the fairies were all about her, sing- 
ing and dancing, hope had seen the first faint glim- 
mer of a star and listening love had caught the rus- 
tling of a wing. 

The Commodore and Mrs. Mortimer had risen 
to dress for dinner, late and a little flustered and 
filled with speculation, when Bill burst in. 

“ I ’ve met her,” he said, “ I ’ve met her.” 

“ Who, my dear?” As if they didn’t know, 
those two old schemers. 

“ Miss Respectable. ... It ’s . . . absolutely 
. . . marvelous.” 






















* 

































































































































































































































































































































































































PART IV 


I 

It was June. 

In Mrs. Mortimer’s old garden, all the roses that 
she had collected and imported and nursed so ten- 
derly through the younger months were in their 
first and freshest blooms. It was a sight to awaken 
optimism in a scientist. 

Free of all the hard and fast conservatism that 
clings to most garden-makers the white-haired lady 
had planted her roses quite irrespective of their so- 
cial status. An old Dundee Rambler whose for- 
bears had been happy enough to cluster yearly over 
a disused gate in an English lane had rushed up and 
broken out among the branches of a tall stiff Holly 
tree which stood in the middle of a bed within 
speaking distance of a group of Mesdames Lam- 
bard. A Maiden’s Blush from Sussex, as crowded 
with small blossoms as the steps of a village Sunday 
school with little girls in their best white frocks, 
drew in the aristocratic scent of the Viscountess 
Folkestone. A fountain of cabbage roses, sweetest 
of all sweet things, looked down without a tremor 
upon the lovely Celeste, and the Himalayan Rosa 


148 THE BLUE ROOM 

Brunonii with her long blue leaves flirted with a 
Papa Goutier brought from a garden that over- 
looked the Seine at Caudebec. Among the collec- 
tion of Tea Roses all carefully tied down to trellis 
rails the Bouquet d’Or gleamed like the morning 
lights in a Florida sky and all down the side that 
was nearest to the house great bushes of Rosa Poly- 
antha made a screen that took the breath aw r ay. 

Made-up for riding, although he no longer dared 
to risk a shaking in the saddle, Barclay Mortimer 
walked about the stable square flipping his boot, 
and thinking back to the good old days when he rode 
forth every morning to watch his string of thor- 
oughbreds file out for exercise. They were the 
times, damme. The air crisp, the early sun setting 
the smooth backs of the rolling Downs alight, the 
ring of many hoofs on the dry turf, a lark throb- 
bing his way to the sky, and the dear lady getting 
color into her cheeks as she rode at his side, — 
one of the several dear ladies. Curse Anno Dom- 
ini. 

Bill had gone out on one of the Irish hunters, and 
the Old Rip, dressed horsy even if his horsy days 
were over, waited for him, while Martha and Mrs. 
Mortimer sat among the roses. ... It had been the 
devil’s own job to get his boots on. Denham was 
undergoing a rest cure before he tackled the busi- 
ness of pulling them off. Language had been flung 
about, and nerves torn. But the result had been 
worth it. They were good legs for boots, and even 
the much-tried valet had to confess that the old 


THE BLUE ROOM 


149 


gentleman looked pretty ’ot stuff as he swaggered 
out in his tight-fitting coat of huge checks, his white 
stock with its little diamond fox, and his brown 
bowler cocked over his ear. It was a dog’s life, 
with the Major back, what with making up for golf 
that never was played, and for tennis, just to look 
on while Bill and young Wainwright covered the 
court, and for tea to which Miss Martha dropped in 
nearly every afternoon. . . . “ Somethin’ doin’ in 
that direction,” if Denham could feel the way the 
wind blew. “ Only ’ad to cock an eye at the Major 
to see that. Sloppy, that ’s what ’e was.” And he 
did n’t wonder. A reg’lar flower of a girl. Far 
too young for that chip of the old block, she was, 
though. A beastly shame. Still, it was none of 
his business. Nor Albery’s neither. And after all 
Bill was being a good boy now all right. Put a pa- 
per weight on that there new leaf, from the look 
of it. A bit of a blow for them bits o’ fluff in 
town, he ’d bet. Well, well, there were changes in 
the air, that was certain. The war had a lot to 
answer for. . . . The eyes and tongues of the serv- 
ants’ quarters had let nothing go by. 

For two reasons which seemed to him to be good 
Bill cut his ride short. One was that Teddy Jed- 
burgh was expected at the house that afternoon for 
a fortnight’s visit, and the other that Martha was 
due to tea, having missed the previous day. He 
chuckled when he found the immaculate old man 
hanging about the yard. He was in too beatific a 
mood to be impatient of being constantly dogged by 


150 


THE BLUE ROOM 


his father. It was good to be able to provide the 
dear old boy with means, however childish, of break- 
ing the monotony of his daily round, and he re- 
joiced in the fact that there was enough vitality left 
in that once active body even to affect activities of 
which it was incapable. 

The sweating hunter was led away, with flicking 
tail. 

“ How do you like him, Bill ? ” 

“ One of the best. Goes like a bird.” He 
caught sight of Martha in the heart of the garden. 
It seemed right that she should be there. He had 
missed her yesterday, strangely. “ No sign of 
Teddy yet? ” 

“ Not yet. He ’s not due for half an hour. The 
car was timed to leave your rooms at half past two. 
It ’s a good two hours' run. Walk round the 
stables with me.” The old man was a little jealous 
of his wife and even of Martha, much as he wanted 
to see the fulfillment of his last ambition. 

Having imagination Bill knew this and took his 
father’s arm. But he threw a quick surreptitious 
glance towards the garden. He had said, in pulling 
down his fourth wall, “ that there could be no first 
lover stuff about him in his reconstruction plan, that 
he had n’t got to fall passionately in love, and that 
sort of thing.” A month ago he did n’t honestly 
think that he was capable, after having distributed 
his love so lavishly, of reviving the divine spark. 
But this child, with her large steady eyes and vir- 
ginal simplicity, had stirred other and rarer emo- 


THE BLUE ROOM 151 

tions than those of passion. Her youth and trust- 
fulness touched all his sense of respect, her sudden 
flashes of love-hunger startled him like a crash of 
cymbals in a minuet, and her strength of will and 
power of presenting an attitude of impersonality 
that made her a little sister of the roses put him on 
his mettle. She was interesting, unexpected, brave, 
practical, wistful and as guileless and aboveboard 
as a spring morning. 

The Commodore beamed. Had he exaggerated 
in the description of his close relationship with his 
son Bill in that delectable memoir? Let anybody 
take a look at them now. ... It was the tenth time 
that Bill had been walked round the stables. It 
was, therefore, the tenth time that he had been 
obliged to listen to exactly the same anecdotes about 
the various horses and the way in which they were 
bred. But it was in front of the loose box of 
“ Beauty Boy ”, an old and bony hunter with four 
white stockings and a wall eye, that the longest story 
was sprung. He had been in the habit of carrying 
a certain lady a year or two before the war and for 
that reason would be treated with every considera- 
tion until such time as he gave his final kick. 
“ The last of ’em, Bill, the last of my loves, my boy. 
And what a dear beautiful creature, eh. You 
remember her, of course. The old house at Epsom 
appealed to her and racing was in her blood. . . 
Not altogether gone, those happy days. The lamp 
of memory lights me through my dullest hours.” 

Bill led him away. Not for the first time the 


152 


THE BLUE ROOM 

irony of all this hit him pretty hard. While his 
father delighted to bask in the pale glory of his 
past misdeeds he, on the contrary, was eager to for- 
get the past and push his foot into the door of the 
future. And the difference in the point of view 
lay merely in a matter of age. 

Knowing that the old man intended to make an- 
other change of clothes before he dressed for din- 
ner, in order to keep up the pretence of being hot 
from riding, Bill escorted him to the house. 
Martha waved from the garden and both men re- 
plied. 

“ A charming girl, a delightful girl,” said the 
Commodore. “ Eh, Bill, eh, my boy?” He was 
under a most solemn promise to the white-haired 
lady to let things run their course without putting 
his finger on the pulse. But it was permissible to en- 
deavor to find out the state of Bill’s feelings by 
dropping a fly now and then, just a blue Jock Scott. 

And that afternoon Bill, like a hungry salmon, 
swallowed it whole. He had been curiously shy 
for the past month. “ She ’s the girl, Father,” he 
said gravely. “ She ’s so utterly the girl and I love 
her so much that I’m ina dead funk about trying 
my luck.”. . . And he wheeled round and marched 
off to where his mother sat with Martha. 

The old man watched the tall figure until it be- 
came blurred against the background. His sight 
was far from good. There was a smile of huge ex- 
citement on his over-massaged face. In the few 
words that he had drawn so unexpectedly out of his 


THE BLUE ROOM 


1S3 


son there was enough news to fill his wife with joy 
and triumph. Her propinquity scheme had worked 
to perfection, it seemed to him. He might, even 
yet, make queer grandfatherly noises at a little 
bundle of humanity that guaranteed the future of 
his house ! 

Denham, with the irritating air of one who knew 
his duty, was waiting for him in the dressing room. 

“ A red tie, Denham, a red tie,” he sang out. 
“ This is a red-letter day, you much-tried worm.” 

II 

Barclay Mortimer was right, for once, in be- 
lieving that he had a piece of news for his wife. 
As a rule his great discoveries were like taking coals 
to Newcastle or imparting the headlines of yester- 
day’s newspaper to a diligent student of current 
events. This time, however, he had got hold of 
something that would send all her worries flying and 
bring back her peace of mind. 

During the month that had slipped quietly away 
since Mrs. Mortimer had brought Bill and Martha 
together so cunningly, she had received two dis- 
tinct shocks. She had considered herself to be 
quite certain of Martha. Under the girl’s naive 
dignity it was easy to see the flutter of her heart 
when Bill was near, easy to read, behind her mask 
of lightness, the all-consuming hope that burned in 
her eyes. The little defenses erected by her protegee 
in order to protect her secret fell before the white- 
haired lady’s knowledge of human nature. Hith- 


154 


THE BLUE ROOM 


erto, however, she had looked upon Martha as 
merely a sweet, fresh girl, most suitable as the fu- 
ture mother of Mortimers. She now had to con- 
fess, after these days of closer examination, that 
she was not just the pliable, malleable little person 
of her supposition, to be “ brought forward ” at the 
right moment and willingly sacrificed on the altar 
of the Mortimer ambition. With some concern 
she had discovered that the child, as she had per- 
sisted in regarding her, had grit and courage, and, 
what made her plan less easy, the sort of pride that 
demanded a full and complete return of the love that 
she had nursed during those three anxious and de- 
plorable years. And the shock came from her 
knowledge of the fact, most surprising and disturb- 
ing, that Martha was not the sort of girl who had 
anything whatever of the martyr in her constitu- 
tion and could not be brought forward, under any 
pressure or persuasion, unless in Bill’s proposal there 
was all the fine fervor of a lover. Pride? The 
child had as much of it as there is steel in a sky- 
scraper. It was her backbone. 

That shock received, with its subsequent food for 
thought and consternation, the other , one was al- 
most immediately provided by Bill. Being her son 
he had been easier to read than Martha. There is 
never anything very complex about a man. The 
romance with which she had taken care to flavor 
that first meeting had worked. Bill had come back 
from it as pleased as Punch. Here, by the grace of 
God, was Miss Respectable. Things looked good. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


155 

But there was a humbleness and a lack of confidence 
about him which, instead of fading out under the 
influence of propinquity, as it generally does, grew 
stronger. He talked about his age. He began to 
throw stones at himself for his youthful ubiquity. 
And the more he found in Martha to respect and ad- 
mire the more doubtful he became of the honesty of 
asking her to marry him, when he had so little to 
give in. return for all that she would bring him. 
Honesty, — think of it! The free and easy Bill, 
the complete man of the world, was not to be found 
in this new and irresolute Bill who put himself in 
the scales with a dear nice girl, and was completely 
outweighed. That was the shock. That was what 
gave the white-haired lady a series of sleepless 
nights. It must be remembered, also, that Bill had 
said that there could be no first lover stuff in this 
matter of marriage and reconstruction and Mrs. 
Mortimer was no believer in miracles. It was al- 
together too much to hope for. She did not read 
into Bill's queer moods — his sudden desire to be 
alone for hours at a time, his long silences in the 
drawing-room after dinner, his restlessness and ob- 
vious discontent with himself — that he had fallen 
headlong into love. If she had she would have 
ceased instantly to worry, knowing from long expe- 
rience that love eventually carries even honesty be- 
fore it and would provide Bill with all the excuse 
he needed to go in and win. If he could give 
Martha love, he would presently argue, he could 
offer her everything that he had and under those 


156 THE BLUE ROOM 

conditions his conscience would lie easy and his 
Blue Room remain locked. 

Teddy Jedburgh was coming down, it was pretty 
obvious, to a set of cross purposes and curious tan- 
gents of temperament that might make him regret- 
ful to leave the city. A mother who seemed to see 
her pet scheme in jeopardy, his pal who was so much 
in love that he was afraid of being refused, and a 
girl whose pride was so strong and unbendable that 
she would love and lose rather than love and be 
sacrificed. 

And it had all looked so easy. 

Ill 

“ Well,” asked Bill, “ how are you to-day? ” 

Martha smiled up at him. “ As well as ever,” 
she answered. 

Throwing a quick glance from one to the other, 
— Bill pretending to be as off-hand as though talk- 
ing to a sister-in-law, Martha acting the part of a 
girl who was obliged to be civil to this man because 
she was a friend of his mother, — Mrs. Mortimer 
was seized with a spasm of disappointment, not un- 
mixed with irritation. Good Heavens, what were 
they playing at, these two? Already a precious 
month had fallen from the calendar and the much- 
to-be-desired marriage was no nearer than it had 
been. Queer creatures, human beings, with all the 
handicaps of pride and conscience, vanity and tem- 
peramental kinks! 

“ I see Albery fluttering on the veranda,” she said. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


157 


“ I am probably needed to speak to someone on the 
telephone.” And she rose, smiled an apology and 
left them together. It was not up to her usual 
form. It was indeed the work of an amateur. But 
for the moment she had lost her touch, being non- 
plussed at the criss-cross way in which things were 
going. She was human too, even at her time of 
life. 

Bill watched her go, grateful for her sense of 
sportsmanship but depressed beyond words that he 
was unable to take advantage of it. What on earth 
could this epitome of everything that was sweet 
and springlike find in him? It was an impertinent 
idea. Nineteen and a battered thirty-four. It was 
absurd. 

Martha made r,gom on the stone bench. How 
well he looked in riding kit. She loved him 'best 
like that. He brought her photograph to life. But 
what was the use ? He did n’t care. She was only 
the kid from the house on the other side of the 
brook. “ How did ‘ White Star’ go?” she asked, 
casually. 

“ A good beast,” he said. “ Absolutely wasted 
here. He ought to be hunted three days a week. 
Jogging along a bridle path bores him stiff. Hard 
luck.” What a darling she was in that jolly little 
frock ! 

“When are you going to exercise your polo 
ponies ? ” 

“ Oh, I dunno. One of these days, I suppose.” 

He was getting as bored as “White Star,” it 


158 


THE BLUE ROOM 


seemed to her, — and for much the same reason. 
There was n’t anything to keep him in that quiet 
place, now that he had given a month to his people. 
She dreaded the moment when he would say that 
he was going off somewhere to do things. Sitting 
about among flowers did n’t suit him. But his 
friend was coming to stay, and that meant another 
few weeks of him, at any rate .... Dreams never 
came true ! 

A strained silence came upon them. 

Bees carried on, and a big robin hauled at a 
worm with which to fill a red and gaping mouth 
and the scent of roses cloyed the warm air. What 
a place and what a month for love, — the one real 
thing that life could give. 

Martha made another effort. “ Are you going 
to write a book about the war, Major Mortimer? ” 

Bill darted a look at her. Was this a joke? No, 
she was quite in earnest. But she won a laugh and 
that was something. He seemed to have forgotten 
how to laugh lately. “ I should n’t know how to 
begin,” he said, “ or how to go on if I did. A 
couple of pages of slang and bad spelling and I 
should be through. I ’m not an educated man. 
I ’m only a polo player.” He was considerably 
flattered at her question, all the same. “ And talk- 
ing about war books,” he added, “ I got on the 
phone to Brentano’s the other day, to order a war 
book by a British officer who was attached to us for 
a bit, an awful good chap who had seen the whole 
show and been wounded three times. They told 


THE BLUE ROOM 


159 


me that war books had dropped dead twenty- four 
minutes after the armistice was signed. Can you 
believe it? It reminds me of the women’s shops on 
Fifth Avenue that display bathing dresses with the 
snow on the ground. Millions of men died so that 
the good old crowd might continue to swarm in 
Fifth Avenue, and what do they care? The war 
is n’t over yet by a long chalk but it ’s the next sen- 
sation that everybody ’s waiting for. Memory ’s 
the shortest thing there is, these days.” 

She had set him going. And it did n’t much mat- 
ter what he said. It was his voice that she wanted 
to hear. 

And catching something of her sympathy he went 
on, glad enough to empty the accumulation of some 
of his silences. “ It ’s pretty natural, I suppose. 
All bands play lively tunes on the way back from 
funerals. One down, t’ other come on. There ’s 
the mopping-up process to begin, the reconstruction 
business. And that ’s all I ’m thinking about. The 
new start, beginning all over again, setting the house 
in order after the debauch, so to speak. That ’s the 
next job plain enough and I wish it was as easy as 
it looked.” He was thinking aloud rather than 
talking, — worrying the thing that was uppermost 
in his mind; going over the old arguments, in his 
doglike way, in the hope of coming out at the right 
place. He had not bothered to use his brain much. 
It was completely out of practice. “ Here ’s the old 
house and all that it stands for. And here are my 
father and mother with the sands running out, 


160 


THE BLUE ROOM 


It ’s up to me to take myself by the scruff of the 
neck and become serious. But who ’s going to take 
me seriously ? That ’s the point. I want to plant 
roots and settle down and take a wife and all that. 
Who ’s wife? It *s going to be mighty difficult to 
find a girl to become Mrs. Bill Mortimer, — I mean 
the girl. I ’m not like Tom Wainwright, in the 
first flush of giddy youth and all that. I ’m in the 
middle of things, with precious little to show for 
the beginning . . . .” 

Someone laughed. He dried up instantly, sur- 
prised and self-conscious. He looked round and 
caught a pair of brown incredulous eyes filled with 
amusement, — frank and unmistakable amusement. 
Good Lord, what had he said that was so infernally 
funny ? 

Martha had her laugh out. It came to an end 
with a ring of impatience. “ Who ’s going to take 
you seriously ? ” echoed. “ In the middle of 
things, — you ! Why is it going to be mighty 
difficult ? ” And then pride holding up its huge 
hand, she dried up, just as she was about to knock 
all her walls down and stand among the debris, ut- 
terly exposed. ... If she had possessed even half 
the knowledge of men that belonged to the vast 
majority of the girls of her age she would have 
been able to see in the mood of this man, in his 
humbleness and depression, the fact that he only 
wanted one kind word to stumble into a confession 
of love. And in her eagerness and joy she would 
have given him not one kind word but a hundred, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


161 


and in less than two minutes have been hiding her 
face against his shoulder. But what did she know 
of men other than a father and a brother and Wop 
gardeners and Irish chauffeurs, and the ice-man and 
grocers’ assistants, the piano-tuner and the memo- 
ries of Tom’s inarticulate schoolfellows who had fol- 
lowed each other about like geese during holiday 
visits ages ago. But in Bill’s mention of a vague 
girl that he had to “ find ” she saw herself as an in- 
tangible thing still who had failed to come through, 
who had not materialized. It was a devastating 
shock. 

And under the sting of the laugh that would have 
told any other man all that he wanted to know, Bill, 
going about like a cat on hot bricks in his dealings 
with this Miss Respectable, felt like a yawl that had 
suddenly lost the wind. She thought him funny, 
and no wonder. He was a laughable object to a 
young thing to whom he must appear to be in the 
veteran class. A nice damn thing for a champion 
philanderer to find that the first real love of his life 
was as far out of reach as the sun ! 

He got up with an absurd attempt at a grin. He 
was not going to open himself up for another such 
laugh if he knew anything about it. “ Tea ’s about 
on,” he said. “ Shall we go up? ” 

“ It ’s the only thing I ’m thinking about,” she 
answered, and led the way up along the narrow 
rose-lined path, with her chin in the air. 


f 


162 THE BLUE ROOM 

IV 

A car drove up to the house as Bill and Martha 
joined Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer on the veranda. 

With the instinct of that true and delightful hos- 
pitality that is so essentially American the Old Rip 
and the white-haired lady hastened with Bill to greet 
their guest on the threshold. 

“ Hello, Teddy! ” 

“ Hello, Bill.” 

Jedburgh gave a fleeting but appreciative glance 
at the old house before getting out of the car. Hav- 
ing come straight from his work on the British 
Mission he was in uniform, and ugly as its color was 
it was well cut and well ironed. In any clothes he 
was the sort of man who held the eye because of his 
height and slightness and a rather rare grace that 
suggested a reincarnation from the white wig pe- 
riod. 

“ Mother,” said Bill, “ let me introduce my friend 
Major Jedburgh of the Royal Air Force.” 

“ You are very welcome, Major Jedburgh.” 

Teddy gave her a ceremonial salute and bent over 
her hand. “ You are most kind,” he said. 

“ My father.” 

“ Welcome to my house, Major Jedburgh.” 

The salute was repeated. “ Thank you, Sir.” 

“ You are just in time for tea,” said Mrs. Morti- 
mer. 

Whereupon recovering his cap, the Major gave 
his arm to his hostess and led the way to the table, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


163 


which was surrounded by chairs. Albery, who had 
watched all this Elizabethanism with unctuous ap- 
preciation, bore down upon the car. 

“ Miss Wainwright, Major Jedburgh.” 

This was not a bit like the man that she had ex- 
pected to see. 

“ A primrose,” thought Teddy, catching his 
breath. And during the buzz of talk that followed, 
for some of which he was responsible, he examined 
Bilks good-looking face with a sort of reluctant 
eagerness. Was it with this slice of spring that he 
was going to build a church out of the ruins of his 
past ? . . . Some men had all the luck. He caught 
on again in time to say “ I remember very well ” 
to the old man’s statement that they had met before, 
years ago, at a hunt breakfast at his father’s place 
in Leicestershire. He had clean forgotten the in- 
cident. He must have been six at the time. 

“ Your mother dined with me in London during 
the Coronation season,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “ I 
shall never forget her beauty. I hope that she is 
well.” 

“ She is dead,” said Teddy. “ But I hope so too.” 

The disconcerted murmur was relieved by the 
pontifical presence of Albery, with a plate of hot 
muffins. 

And during all this Martha had watched and 
made notes. . . . She could n’t see this man, with the 
poet’s forehead and the eyes of a humanitarian, 
leading a squadron of death birds to drop bombs on 
enemy troop trains, and dive out of the clouds, with 


164 


THE BLUE ROOM 


roaring engines, to give battle to a flock of Huns. 
She looked at the long line of ribbons on his coat, 
and the wound and service stripes on his sleeve. 
But it was the lines round his eyes that told the 
tale. . . . Somehow he made the war that was sup- 
posed to have ceased stand out with peculiar crudity 
as the most gigantic paradox in the history of 
crime. . . . She could see him playing with children 
under old trees and sitting with a smile on his lips 
in a house of peace. He had killed and offered 
himself to death for the protection of the young 
and the old, — the pawn of bad men and poisonous 
fetishes. But she called it patriotism, not knowing. 

The same thought had come to Mrs. Mortimer. 
And when the Commodore gave her the chance, — 
the sight of this Englishman had opened up many 
memories and recollections of mutual friends, — 
she leaned forward. “ Tell me why you, of all 
men, joined the Flying Corps? ” 

“ It ’s extraordinary how many people have asked 
me that,” he said, looking at Martha because he had 
seen that it was her question too. “To answer you 
properly I ’m afraid I ’ll have to go into the psychol- 
ogy of the two sorts of men who seized the chance 
of going up into the air. There were only two 
sorts, as I have made it out, and I think they were 
pretty equally divided. My sort, to take that first, 
was made up of men who had been trained to dis- 
cipline, but who detested the idea of red-tape and 
the necessary but irritating system of carrying out 
orders that percolated down through a dozen au- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


165 


tomata from the hide-bound and generally unimagi- 
native High Command. We jumped into the Fly- 
ing Corps in the hope of escaping from the irrita- 
tion of all that and because we saw in it the one 
opportunity to free-lance, to use our own initiative 
and to get out of the daily routine of trench life. 
We argued that as we were pretty certain to be 
killed we might as well die for a sheep as a lamb. 
We exchanged from other branches of the service 
at the earliest possible moment and made a scientific 
study of the new art as a sort of mental refreshment. 
Don’t imagine that the danger or the so-called ro- 
mance appealed to us. None of us wanted to com- 
mit suicide or die before our time. What we did 
want was a certain independence of action, and the 
brief possession of our own souls between quick 
bursts of duty. Some of us were poets, some 
fathers, and nearly all of us loathed war and the 
politicians. The other sort was composed of very 
young men, almost boys, who had not only never 
been trained to discipline but who had deliberately 
gone out of their way to ignore all forms of law 
and order, who broke speed limits for the sheer joy 
and mischief of the thing and who were never likely 
to find themselves on earth. To these fellows, care- 
less and gallant, and wholly imbued with the spirit 
of adventure, the air was a new and appropriate 
element, devoid of policemen, magistrates, Dons, 
Stop and Go signs, and all the rest of the excres- 
cences of civilization, as they regarded them. They 
held their lives on a thin string and although they 


166 


THE BLUE ROOM 


did n’t enjoy killing there grew up in them the spirit 
of competition which made the downing of enemy 
planes the essence of the game. They came to the 
Flying Corps like homing pigeons certain of finding 
kindred spirits, and they lived in a continual chaos 
of practical joking and larkiness into which no seri- 
ousness was ever permitted to put its foot for more 
than ten seconds. Whether any of them found 
themselves in the air I don’t know. I think they 
had to die for that. And they did die, in the great 
winnowing of youth, in shoals, but there seemed to 
be an unlimited number to take their places. The 
ones who came out alive are dancing now and back 
at their old tricks with added zest. The dead ones 
are finding out what it is to be understood for the 
first time and are very happy, according to them- 
selves.” 

He gave a little laugh and a gesture of apology 
for having monopolized the conversation. There 
was a complete silence. 

The two old people, to whom the last sentence 
opened up an amazing possibility, gazed with a 
great wistfulness at the quiet graceful man who 
seemed to have looked at life and death from a 
higher altitude than that of their own, and each 
made a mental note of an eager desire to get him 
alone for further questioning. 

Martha had begun to listen to all this with keen 
interest, held by Jedburgh’s eyes, but when, because 
of his characteristic courtesy, he turned from one 
to the other of his listeners, she seized the oppor- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


167 


tunity to watch Bill who sat looking at his friend 
with a sort of school-boy pride. And as she did so 
only the smooth sound of the English voice came 
to her. She lost the meaning of the words under a 
sudden fever of love, an agony of isolation. . . . Bill 
wanted to “ plant roots and settle down and take a 
wife and all that.” It was going to be mighty 
difficult to find a girl — the girl. Which proved 
that during the whole of that month he had been 
looking through her and searching. It made her 
miserable beyond words, and angry too and humil- 
iated. If she had known enough to have tumbled 
to the idea that she was being deliberately left alone 
with Bill, brought forward for his consideration, 
she would have bolted and disappeared, or, more 
probably, being necessary at home, flared out into a 
little burst of redhot words and told Bill to go and 
look for this girl and not waste his time on her. 
And if, knowing everything, the whole selfish 
scheme, she were asked by Bill to be his wife and 
were not supremely satisfied that he asked for love, 
she would, though wholly his, consign him to the 
devil in the honest Wainwright English picked up 
from her father. That was the Martha who was 
just beginning to be discovered by the white-haired 
lady, to her surprise and dismay. 

Everything had slipped into a pretty hopeless 
mess because conscience and a lack of confidence had 
been added to Bill’s other difficulties in dealing with 
Miss Respectable. 


168 


THE BLUE ROOM 


V 

The one good thing about uniform was that it 
saved a man from the fag of changing for dinner. 

But Bill dressed quickly. Martha had gone 
home, but was to return with Tom Wainwright to 
dine. It was Mrs. Mortimer’s idea to have a little 
party for Teddy Jedburgh. So she said. Her real 
wish was to keep Bill and the child as much as pos- 
sible together. The Commodore had given her his 
bonne bouche and her hopes ran high again. If 
Bill continued to hang back much longer she would 
give him the necessary courage to propose by tell- 
ing him what she knew of Martha’s feelings. But 
this must be, she argued, her last card, her great 
desire being to keep as much romance in her scheme 
as she could. Her conscience pricked sometimes, 
too. 

Martha had refused hitherto to leave her father 
in the evening. It so happened that this was the 
night of an annual banquet of bankers in town. 
And so she could get away, — mother having to 
keep to her room still. 

Jedburgh was sitting at the open window of his 
bedroom when Bill went in. He was reading a thin 
book of poems and smoking. One long leg was 
crossed over the other and that faint indefinable 
smile was playing round his lips. 

“ Good for you, old thing,” he said. “ What ’s 
the news? ” 

“ Nothing here. What ’s yours? ” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


169 


“ Well, a certain amount of quiet work with those 
very excellent fellows in Whitehall Street, a thor- 
ough exploration by day of the obvious parts of New 
York, the amazing city, and some rather disturbing 
evenings at your very nice apartment with Jeanne 
Dacoral, Birdie Carroll and Susie Hatch, especially 
Susie Hatch.” 

“ How do you mean, — disturbing? ” 

“ Well, one or other of them, sometimes two and 
once or twice all three, have come up most nights in 
the hope of seeing you. Don’t imagine for a mo- 
ment, my dear chap, that I use the word disturbing 
in a personal sense. I like them, especially Susie 
Hatch. And Jeanne is a dear little soul who makes 
the piano speak her thoughts. And Birdie Carroll, 
with her round face and her urgent need of seeds 
and sugar, lives up to her name, except that thank 
Heaven she does n’t carol.” 

Bill laughed. “ You ’re right,” he said. “ She ’s 
in musical comedy.” 

Teddy Jedburgh marked the point with one of 
his airy waves of the hand. It was n’t a Latin 
gesture. It was Oxford. 

“ What I mean is, they ’re worried about you, 
old thing.” 

“ Me? Why?” 

“ Well, where are you ? That ’s the question they 
keep asking. ‘ Where ’s Bill, and what the hell ’s 
he playing at? What ’s come over the man? We 
want him. How much longer is he going to keep 
up this old-home week? Has he turned good and 


170 


THE BLUE ROOM 


gone into hair shirts ? Is he shaking us’, — ad- 
mirable expression, — * and left you behind to let 
us down easy ? ’ ” 

Bill worried his brush-like mustache. “ Um 
. . . I see. You must have cursed those rooms a 
bit. I ’m darned sorry, Teddy.” 

“ No, no, no, really. They ’re the only home 
I ’ve got, and your young friends have protected 
me from an overwhelming loneliness. Of course 
I said nothing about your — what did you call it? 
— orgy of reconstruction and all that. I had n’t 
your permission. I knew nothing except that you 
wanted naturally to give yourself to your people 
and so forth and played host. Very instructive. 
My education has been greatly improved. But in 
going back to Susie Hatch, Bill, — well, I think you 
must use imagination and immense sympathy. At 
once. She would n’t open up and show her little 
soul to me to save herself from torture. You know 
that. But she ’s hurt, old son, deeply and badly 
hurt. You haven’t even written her a note since 
you left town and she ’s like a flower in a drought.” 

Bill worried more. “ Damn everything,” he said, 
obviously moved. He began to stride about that 
neat, quaint, very perfect room with its Colonial 
bed and tall-boy, writing desk and dressing table, 
all rosy like the face of an old apple woman. . . . 
The admirable expression to shake couldn’t be 
linked on to the word past, it seemed. Not that, 
with second thoughts, it mattered much. Martha 
had laughed. But, thinking again, Bill was going 


THE BLUE ROOM 


171 


to be a good boy now anyhow, — and how about 
Susie Hatch, to say nothing of the other wild oats? 
He had n’t, in his absurd ecstasy, made the remotest 
attempt to cut them down. In cutting Susie there 
would be blood on his scythe. “ Damn every- 
thing,” he said again, “ especially me.” 

“Yes, but speaking frankly,” said Jedburgh, 
“ that does n’t achieve much, old thing. I think 
you ought to see her and let her into your new plans 
as gently as you can. I would have been glad 
enough, a few weeks ago, to have taken Susie off 
your hands, and been very good to her. She could 
have married me if that would have appealed to her 
peculiar sense of humor.” 

“ Good Lord,” said Bill. 

“Why? This is an age of revolutions. I ’m no- 
body. She has youth, — that ’s the New Aristoc- 
racy. But I found that tradition dies hard and 
ideals have a knack of appearing to be dead with 
their hearts still beating. I don’t want a mere 
temporary passion that ends in a sordid settlement 
and a sense of shame. I want love and a home and 
she can’t give me these. Neither can I give them 
to her, much as I like her. So I ’m still on the look- 
out, but with my feet too deeply planted in old 
dreams to be satisfied with the sort of philandering 
that I discussed with you. Mental shell shock 
has lifted a bit, you see. Things have become diffi- 
cult as a result.” 

“ I ’ll go up and see her to-morrow,” said Bill. 

And then Jedburgh put the question that had been 


172 THE BLUE ROOM 

in his mind since the moment that he had caught 
sight of the primrose. A flower of a girl with the 
dew on her and a morning hymn in her eyes. That 
description fitted her like a glove. Was she to be 
asked to follow after Jeanne Dacoral, Birdie Car- 
roll and Susie Hatch, — especially Susie Hatch ? 
And the others ? He was Bill’s friend. He under- 
stood the need of the man with the pathetic eager- 
ness to turn over a new leaf. All the same .... 

“ Tell me about Miss Wainwright, Bill.” 

“ There isn’t anything to tell, Teddy. You see 
what she is, and how exactly she fits into the niche 
where I would put her. I ’ve spent a month trying 
to make her like me, but it ’s not coming out right. 
She laughed this afternoon when I roughed out my 
idea. As you say, youth’s the New Aristocracy. 
Without any of your traditions I ’m on the lookout 
too. Reconstruction is n’t so derned easy as it 
seemed.” 

And Jedburgh inwardly confessed to a reluctant 
sense of relief. The primrose deserved better than 
to have a Blue Room in her house. Youth to 
Youth, — it was the old good story. 

“ Better luck, Bill,” he said. 

It was the same old world to which they had both 
come back. 


VI 

The wine cellars were well stocked in the Morti- 
mer House. Teddy Jedburgh and Tom Wainwright 
paid proper tribute to the Veuve Clicquot ’09 and the 


173 


THE BLUE ROOM 

priceless Napoleon brandy. The only satisfaction 
Barclay Mortimer got out of it was in watching the 
enjoyment of his guests. To his eloquently ex- 
pressed regret his drink was barley water,— 

“ ghastly stuff, my dear Major, as joyless as a rainy 
day.” 

As soon as the men left the dining table for the 
drawing room, never dreaming that even at that 
moment certain sly fanatics were at work with 
bribes and blackmail to put the country under the 
heel of a law that would sweep away the effects of 
education and self-discipline because the vast mi- 
nority forgot both, Bill shut himself up with the tele- 
phone. As good as his word, he was going to make 
an appointment to see Susie Hatch in the morning. 
He hated the idea of her being hurt, although he 
didn’t see what he could do to make things any 
better. He knew Susie, 

Mrs. Mortimer’s high spirits were contagious. 
The Commodore, wearing again the ribbon of the 
Legion d’Honneur, was in his best mood. His 
stories were delightful, and told with more economy 
of detail than usual. They were new to Jedburgh 
and Tom Wain wright and went well. The only 
thing new in them to the white-haired lady and Bill 
was the way in which they were sprung. But they 
both laughed at the right moment with more loyalty 
than is generally shown by members of much tried 
families to the chestnuts of the heads of them. 
With a sense of appreciation in which there were 
both humor and pathos the old boy thanked them 


174 


THE BLUE ROOM 

for this as soon as he could. His manners were of 
the old ripe school. 

Tom took the place on the sofa by Mrs. Morti- 
mer, so Jedburgh availed himself of the chance to 
lean over the piano and get a few words with 
Martha, who had been playing. She had a pretty 
touch. 

You must be very proud of your brother,” he 
said. 

Martha’s smile was exactly what he hoped to see. 

It added to his feeling of “ not belonging,” though, 
— to an infinite loneliness. “ We are,” she said. 

I came over on the same ship. His eagerness 
to get back added a beat a minute to the engines. 

A born soldier, as he showed by his imaginative 
treatment of his men. He ought to sacrifice his 
career and stay in your army. He’ll be needed 
again sooner or later.” 

“You don’t believe in the League of Nations 
then ? ” 

Jedburgh waved his hand. “Human nature 
can’t be altered by a set of rules, nor can the millen- 
nium be achieved on this planet by anything that 
we can do. ‘ A Man’s reach must exceed his grasp 
or what ’s a Heaven for? ’ ” 

“ That ’s an awful thing to say to women.” 

“ Why to women ? ” 

“We have to stay at home and eat our hearts ' 
out.” 

“ If y°u did n’t it is doubtful if there ’d be any 
men to come back to you.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


175 


She got up so that her face should be out of the 
spread of light. This man could easily read her 
secret, she felt. 

“ Don’t go,” said Jedburgh. “Sit here and I ’ll 
play you the story of this war, — I mean if you ’d 
care to hear it.” 

Martha sat down and leaned forward. Play and 
fight, and read secrets, — what else could he do? 

Jedburgh drew up to the piano and held his hands 
over the keys for a moment. 

They came down with a crash of discords. The 
Old Rip nearly jumped out of his shirt. It was fol- 
lowed by a great burst of drums and bugles, a med- 
ley of the Wacht am Rhein, the Marseillaise and the 
Brabangonne, and after a moment of chaos and inde- 
cision of God Save the King. Then the music 
swelled into a broad tremendous swing with an un- 
dercurrent of running feet, children’s whimpers, 
women’s urgings and the pathetic grumbling of old 
people, the explosion of guns, queer laughter, pierc- 
ing screams, the rumble of retreating wagons and 
the faint persistent singing of “ Tipperary,” “ Old 
ver ’and out, naughty boy,” and the Russian Na- 
tional anthem. There was a scrambling of high 
notes, rush, ecstasy, effort, a deep booming in the 
bass, strong, dull and death dealing, and in it all the 
wail and stumble of crowds hurrying. Then a 
series of melodies, sometimes sweet and cathedral- 
like, sometimes grossly banal and of the music-hall 
and the cafe, sometimes all queer and out of time, 
then drab and in the minor and always with the old 


176 


THE BLUE ROOM 


boom and shatter. Sometimes an ecstatic burst of 
the Marseillaise would sweep out again, urging and 
appealing, running into Tipperary with little flares 
of the Brabanqonne and the distant suggestion of 
Russian music, the hoarse roar of the Wacht am 
Rhein, renewed monotony and through it all boy- 
laughter and the tang of wires against the wind. 
And again the dull and banal and the monoto- 
nous with the steady boom and shatter, edging some- 
times on the satiric but never again touching the 
ecstatic or the religious and with no suggestion of 
the anthems of the nations except for a quick break 
into that of Italy. And so it went on, with a brief 
clang of quarrels, mutinies, lunatic cries, stern or- 
ders, grim steady ings, an undercurrent of synco- 
pation and the swirl of dancing feet. Airs that be- 
gan as hymns ended as fox-trots, — the boom and 
the shatter prevailing. And then came a new and 
curious twist of angry protest at once subdued, of 
cynicism and argument, which was drowned by the 
clatter of kettle-drums, the splitting of air bombs, 
the tang of wires, women’s moaning, the glib chat- 
ter of politicians and falling rain. Monotony, 
monotony, tinged with yet another new thing, — 
atheism, but still the same old boom and shatter. 
And then, suddenly, panic, chaos, unholy fear, an 
onward rush, jeers and laughter and yells, the ut- 
ter disappearance of jazz, once more the organ 
notes in terrified appeal, the awful nearness of the 
boom and shatter, the blare of the Star-Spangled 
Banner, a change into another medley of national 


THE BLUE ROOM 


1 77 t 


melodies, the gradual fading of the roar of guns — 
and silence. But only for the edge of a moment. 
Jazz came again, jazz, loud and persistent, jazz and 
the swirl of dancing feet and women's laughter, the 
moaning of great ships and cripples, the idiotic 
jabber of political voices, the hoarse triumph of 
Bolsheviki, the satirical questioning of atheists with 
pens, the swirl of dancing feet. . . . 

“ Good God," gasped Barclay Mortimer, drawing 
two fingers across a wet forehead. 

But Teddy Jedburgh did n’t leave the piano. He 
sat with his hands on his knees, pale, and looking 
through things with that faint indefinable smile on 
his lips. Presently his hands touched the notes 
again and out into the room floated the sound of 
“ Should auld acquaintance be forgot — ’’ 

But he stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar 
because Martha burst out crying and ran into the 
moonlight. 


VII 

Mrs. Mortimer would have given a great deal 
for Bill to have been in the room when this hap- 
pened. At a sign from her he would have followed 
Martha out. A woman’s crying, according to her 
experience, had one of two different effects on a man 
in love. Both caused him to lose his head, but one 
made him curse and the other gave him courage to 
take her in his arms. She would have gambled on 
the latter. But he was trying, at the moment, to 
persuade a telephone operator to get the number 


178 


THE BLUE ROOM 


that he required instead of the one she considered 
that he ought to have, and the great opportunity 
passed. A chat with a blind beggar on his way to 
the House of Commons once brought about the 
downfall of a Prime Minister. 

And so Barclay Mortimer performed the act of 
consolation in his best manner. He was a master 
of the art. His dear Italian had often wept for no 
apparent reason and the little lady who had hunted 
Beauty Boy had had a most disconcerting way of 
bursting into tears at the most inconvenient mo- 
ments. It was, and always will be, woman’s rudi- 
mentary method of claiming the undivided atten- 
tion and the reassurance of love that she needs so 
often. 

Martha was laughing when she was escorted back 
to the drawing room. She said that she had cried 
for all the boys who had been killed. She was 
obliged to offer some excuse. But she knew, and 
Mrs. Mortimer guessed, that she had suddenly lost 
her self-control, under the effect of Jedburgh’s im- 
pressionistic sketch, as the logical outcome of a 
month of many emotions. 

The evening ended early because Martha had is- 
sued solemn warnings as to the Mortimer habits. 
The alacrity with which the Commodore sprang to 
his feet when Tom made the first tentative move 
confirmed his sister’s knowledge. Denham had al- 
ready been waiting for fifteen minutes with all his 
paraphernalia. 

Bill and Teddy walked as far as the brook. It 


THE BLUE ROOM 179 

was a very perfect June night, still and warm, and 
so white and clear that the trees threw shadows and 
some of the daisies had forgotten to close their 
eyes. A full moon occupied her cold impersonal 
place among the uncountable lights of the islands 
of the sky. Bill’s soul had not been in the habit of 
bothering him on his easy way through life. But 
that night, for reasons that had been piling up re- 
cently, he felt a longing to stand on some high place 
and look down upon the earth, — to take a glance 
back and to gaze into the future. And what better 
companion could he have on this brief excursion 
than the ex-flying man whose feet were planted 
deeply in old dreams, and whose ideals had not, 
after all, been left among the mud and bones of 
Flanders. And so he led the way up to the Hill of 
the Seven Sisters and sat down with Teddy on the 
bench which had been the prie-dieu of his mother 
and his girl. 

Away below, all lucent under the white light of 
the moon, lay that great stretch of peaceful country, 
a panorama of slanting valley and sleeping trees, of 
small villages winking a few tired eyes, a wide lake 
glistening like a looking glass, and a range of hills 
in the distance that made a rolling smudge against 
the sky. 

“ Oh, my God ! ” he said involuntarily. 

And Teddy nodded. “ A cathedral, roofless, 
echoing with the passing feet of worshipers, and 
the song of understanding of the survivors of 
death/’ 


180 


THE BLUE ROOM 


And after a long pause Bill began to talk. “ I 
wish I ’d come across you before, when I was a bit 
of a boy.” 

“ Why?” 

“ There ’s a lot of stuff in you that I ’ve never 
known about. I have traditions, — you ’ve seen 
the walls to-night. But somehow, Teddy, I never 
caught their meaning. You caught the meaning 
of yours and you might have explained them to me 
to soak into my imagination. There ’s just a chance 
that I should n’t have had to feel so cursed sick of 
myself as I do to-night, — and have done since I 
began to think.” 

“ Maybe,” said Jedburgh. “ What I call tradi- 
tion led me through school and college with a pretty 
firm hand. But when I came over here, homeless 
and with the dust in my eyes that rose up from the 
debris of the old order of things, I regretted that 
I had been so much a prig as to have missed the 
human links that you have made. There is n’t a 
living creature to catch a signal from me, — no 
Susie Hatch to light up my rooms with a blaze of 
love. There are no memories in my isolation, Bill. 
And what after all has my tradition done for me ? ” 

“ Left you without a Blue Room, old son.” 

“ But is n’t it better to have a Blue Room than no 
rooms at all ? ” 

“No. You can build a new house and leave all 
the doors unlocked.” 

“ That ’s true. . . . The past has an ugly knack 
of running ahead of the present and turning round 


THE BLUE ROOM 181 

to grin. Quaint thing that we have come out at 
the same place by such different paths.” 

Bill heaved a sigh that seemed to come up from 
his boots. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know which 
way to go, now that I ’m here.” 

“ Neither do I,” said Jedburgh. Loyalty to his 
friend put up a huge wall in front of a picture that 
had been filling his eye persistently all the evening, 
— the primrose in a garden that he had made. 
There was something quite devilishly ironical in the 
fact that in Martha who was loved by Bill he had 
found the one girl who had done strange things to 
his heart. 

“ Let ’s go home,” said Bill. 

It was an enviable home in spite of its Blue Room. 
The first that Jedburgh had known since the war 
began its demolishment. They went down to- 
gether, leaving the Seven Sisters to gossip about the 
things to which they had just listened. “ Are you 
going up to see Susie Hatch to-morrow ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes,” said Bill. “ She ’s coming to my room 
for lunch.” 

What he called tradition urged Teddy to play the 
straight game. “ Don’t go back on your tracks, 
Bill. You know those lines about rising on step- 
ping stones. Give yourself another chance with 
Martha. If you have the luck to make her love you 
you can board up that old Blue Room of yours. 
It ’s been done before.” 

If I could make her love me I ’d never give her 
time to pry about. I ’d make every other room too 


182 


THE BLUE ROOM 


attractive. But it is n’t on the cards, Teddy. She 
laughed this afternoon.” 

“ Never mind. Do nothing to-morrow to make 
reconstruction impossible. You were born under a 
good star.” 

“ You advise that? ” 

“ I do. And then come back and go to work 
again. The odds are all in your favor ”. . . He 
was no poacher. Nor had the utter demoralization 
that followed war changed his ideas of friendship. 
His feet were deeply planted in old dreams and he 
could n’t pull them out. Only if Bill failed would 
he scramble up and climb over that infernally high 
wall. It would be fairer than to try and win this 
primrose for himself. 

VIII 

There was precious little conceit about Bill. 
The usual amount of egotism, of course, — the de- 
sire for comfort and the incurable habit of believing 
that the world revolved around himself, — without 
which nature would not be human, but none of the 
preening sense of being indispensable that goes with 
women’s men. Bill was not a woman’s man. He 
was an outdoor man who liked to see a woman in 
his house when it was necessary to go in. It was in 
the winter that he had mostly been caught. Wo- 
men meant more to him, therefore, than to one 
whose only hobby was to pursue, and if he had ana- 
lyzed his state of mind during his bad weather in- 
terludes, — a thing he never did, — he would have 


THE BLUE ROOM 183 

assured himself that he had been the one who had 
been hit, though not very hard. He had been ac- 
cepted, he had always considered, for the good 
things that he had gone out of his way to give and 
afterwards had continued to be looked up from time 
to time because relations had warmed into friend- 
ship. Jeanne Dacoral, Birdie Carroll and the 
others, dear little souls, — had gone on with light 
hearts to other interests. He had delighted in see- 
ing them whenever they had had nothing better to 
do and had taken a keen pleasure in proving his 
gratitude whenever they had thrown out a hint, — 
often before. His hand went to his pocket without 
an effort. 

But the case of Susie Hatch was different, and 
this he knew. She was n’t a City bred child, born 
sophisticated, who realized the asset of sex as a 
perfectly natural thing, and never allowed herself 
to take her lucky strikes too seriously. She was a 
sea-flower, born during the drive of a storm to the 
cantata of tumultuous seas and catastrophic winds. 
Her heart had been blown clean by salt breezes and 
her soul filled with faithfulness by the wonder of 
the skies. She had watched the faint horizon for 
the ship of her dreams, had recognized its lines in 
the yacht that Bill had owned and known in Bill 
her master and mate. He had given her life and 
affection in return for the loyalty and devotion of a 
stray dog. She belonged to him, had cleaved to 
him, like ivy to a wall. If he threw her back into 
the sea she might have forgotten how to swim. If 


184 THE BLUE ROOM 

he cut her down among his wild oats there would be 

blood on the scythe. ... 

Difficult? Good Lord, yes. He did n’t love her 
and he did love Martha, and even if he had loved her 
could he take her home to those two fastidious 
people who were thinking of his wife as the mother 
of his race? 

The car landed him at his apartment twenty min- 
utes too early for his appointment. But when he 
let himself in she was kneeling on the window seat 
with the sun in her hair, as lonely as a sea gull 
perched on an isolated rock. “ Use imagination 
and immense sympathy,” Teddy had said. “ She s 
hurt, old son, deeply and badly hurt.” If he let her 
into his plans, however gently, what would she do? 
About any other girl he would have used the word 
‘ say ’. 

“ Hello, Susie! ” 

The color rushed into her face as she wheeled 
round. It was a thin face, he noticed with a qualm, 
with eyes that told of sleepless nights. But the 
veneer of self-assurance and almost insolent cool- 
ness behind which she had found it necessary to hide 
was instantly assumed from force of habit. In all 
cities there are men among whom the unprotected 
girl must stand in armor. Bill had been away for 
a month and had never written a line. 

“ I did n’t believe you ’d come,” she said. 

How she reminded him of Martha by the angle of 
her chin. “ Have I ever been late before? ” 

“ Before ’s so long ago I almost forget.” But she 


THE BLUE ROOM 


185 


went closer, step by step, like a child who loved in 
spite of punishment, and put her face against his 
heart. After all it might only have been his people 
who had kept him away, and he hated writing let- 
ters. 

Bill was at an utter loss for words. From his 
point of view and that of his father and mother ex- 
cuses were only to be made as a matter of form. 
He had no remote idea of getting out of his respon- 
sibilities towards this girl, and it was his plan to 
double the income that was paid to her by his law- 
yers. From her point of view, as he could see, he 
had been cruel and neglectful and she ached to hear 
that he was sorry. Anyone less soft-hearted than 
Bill would have been able to deal with the situation 
without blundering, in a perfectly matter-of-fact 
way. Conditions had changed. New plans had 
to be made. Lawyers had been instructed on the 
question of money. Good memories would always 
remain and friendly relations continue, with due 
care for the conventions, — and that sort of 
thing. . . . Not so Bill. He had tried to rehearse 
the gist of all this on his way to the City and had 
succeeded in putting together a sort of statement in 
which the sordid and the cold-blooded were alto- 
gether absent. But the sight and the touch of this 
sea-child confused him and put him in the wrong 
and sent all his sentences into a muddle of letters. 

“ Damn the war/’ he said, with not so much ir- 
relevancy as one might think. 

And she jumped at it as the thing that was wholly 


186 


THE BLUE ROOM 


to blame, and held up her face as she had done the 
day of her discovery as a stowaway. 

Bill was going to be a good boy now, according 
to himself, — but he kissed her, and she was happy 
and forgave. All the black thoughts that had come 
to her in sleepless nights lifted and disappeared. 
Bill had come back. Everything was good once 
more. 

“ Come and sit down and tell me everything,” she 
said, and ran him to the big settee, plumped him into 
it and curled up at his side with her arms round his 
neck. 

How on earth was he to do this thing? Recon- 
struction? It was easier said than done with Miss 
Respectable on one side and Susie Hatch on the 
other. “ I wish to God I loved you,” he said to 
himself, looking into the girl’s devoted eyes. “ I ’d 
take you home whatever they said and there ’d be no 
Blue Room there for you, my dear.” 

She read it as she wished to read it and snuggled 
closer. Good times had come again. 

“ Your father and mother have made a great fuss 
of you, eh ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Of course they have. And it was just you, Bill, 
to give them all these weeks. And now the 4 Io- 
lanthe ’ and the wind and salt and me. Is that the 
scheme? I’m starving for the lap of water and 
the mewing of gulls and you.” 

Good God ! 

“ Don’t let ’s take Teddy Jedburgh. I like him, 


THE BLUE ROOM 187 

— he’s a fairy tale, but let ’s go off alone. Let ’s 
go back to the old places and pretend the war was a 
nightmare. I have n’t been tanned for years.” 

“ I Ve sold the ‘ Iolanthe,’ ” said Bill. 

“What? . . . Well, buy another. There are lots 
to be had. It ’s June, Bill, and the sun ’s warming 
up.” 

“ It can’t be done, Susie.” 

“Oh Bill! . . . Well then, find a cottage all by 
itself on the dunes and let ’s be sand boys. Nothing 
matters but the sea and you.” 

The thing had to be faced. “ Would it be the 
same, or something like it, if you took Jeanne or 
Birdie, — or anyone else instead ? . . .” 

Her laugh rang through the room, went flying out 
of the window and was caught in the breeze that 
carried it away over the Plaza. “How you love 
to tease me, don’t you?” she said, tightening her 
clasp. 

That cursed scythe. How he detested to have to 
use it. “ No, I ’m dead serious,” he went on, like a 
bull in a china shop. “You’ve got to count me 
out, Susie.” 

She put her head back so that she could examine 
his face. “ I don’t get you,” she said, her smile 
going out. She began to look thin again. 

“ I don’t see why you should. I ’m no good at 
things like this. It ’s not in my line. But if I 
could begin to tell you of the sort of mood I came 
back and went home with, knowing that I ’ve played 
about long enough, and then finding my father and 


188 


THE BLUE ROOM 


mother pretty old, Susie, and mighty keen for me 
to cut bachelor stuff and settle down and take a 
wife . . .” 

She withdrew herself, slowly and coldly, and 
stood with her foot on the bear’s head and her back 
to the empty firegrate. Behind the armor into 
which she had dived again her young body was all 
bruised by this blow. “ Don’t worry about all the 
rest of it,” she said. “ I can guess, Bill. Why t 
did n’t you write it ? It would have saved you 
coming up and having to stumble it all out.” 
She was n’t sarcastic. She was perfectly cool 
and self-assured, — even kind in a desire to help 
him. 

Bill was a little shocked. “Don’t you care?” 
he asked, getting up. 

She heard the sea calling like a mother. Born 
in its tumult and catastrophe she must go back to it 
for peace. “ Yes, Bill,” she said. 

“ And do you understand ? Do you see the thing 
that I ’ve got to do ? Marriage and children and 
responsibility and all that ? ” 

“ Yes, Bill,” she said. 

He went up to her and put his hands on her shoul- 
ders. She was so quiet, — there was such a queer 
look in her eyes. . . . “ What are you thinking 
about?” 

“ You,” she said, “ and what you ’ve got to do. 
Good luck, Bill.” 

“ You ’ll go on with your work in the studio and 
when the right man ” — 


THE BLUE ROOM 189 

She shook her head. “ It ’s good-by to the right 
man.” 

Emotion surged over him. This water-babe who 
had given him the love of a wife. . . . Oh, curse it! 
How sorry he was. He wished to God that he 
loved her. “Why good-by? Shan’t you let me 
see you sometimes ? ” 

She shook her head again, but her mask fell for 
a second. 

On the thin face, that was as white as foam, he 
saw that queer look that had struck fear into him 
before. There was more in this than being honest 
and drawing blood. There was the sea in her eyes. 
If he did n’t work on every shred of her devotion 
his Blue Room would contain a slight dead figure 
washed up by the tide. 

He caught her in his arms. “ Not that, Susie. 
You would n’t punish me all the rest of my life by 
doing a thing like that. There ’s the family to con- 
sider and what I ’ve brought out of the War. I 
wish like hell I ’d never been in it and was all alone 
in the world. It would all be easy then. But 
things have got to go this way and you won’t be the 
one — oh Susie, not you — to put the stain of your 
blood on my soul.” 

She looked up into his face, not quite the same 
face that she had seen from the sea, and saw that 
his lips were trembling and his eyes full of the sort 
of appeal that there must once have been in hers, 
that time when she had begged for life and love out 
on the yacht. And a great pity came — he wanted 


190 


THE BLUE ROOM 


the right girl — she wasn’t the right girl — and 
children, and she stood on tiptoe, flung her arms 
round his neck and kissed him. 

Itoto slipped in to lay the table, — and they 
walked over to the window. 

“ What you gave me I give you,” she said. 
“ Life. Make the most of it. And to prove that 
you Ve made me master the old sea-feeling I ’ll not 
listen to the call. I ’ll be an artist instead and paint 
the love of you into my pictures. You may trust me.” 

Poor old Bill. He did n’t know what to do or 
say to thank her. He was n’t a woman’s man. But 
his inarticulation was understood by Susie. Ivy 
knows the oak and she knew Bill. . . . Would any- 
one else ever know him so well ? 

IX 

Albery was taking a nap on the veranda when 
Bill got back that afternoon. With a bandana 
handkerchief over his face to keep the flies away, 
the pompous person who had made a vocation of 
butlership was enjoying what he considered to be 
a very honestly earned rest. He justified his use of 
the Commodore’s chair on the part of the veranda 
that was sacred to tea by the fact that his faithful- 
ness had made him almost a member of the family, 
— or at any rate the sort of member who came into 
the open when the family was out. His feet, with 
boots laced only halfway up, and pointing east and 
west, had been placed on another chair. The mas- 
sive recumbent figure, with hands clasped upon the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


191 


central mountain, and clad in garments of excessive 
excellence, could not be a thing of beauty, but it was, 
and would always scrupulously remain, the symbol 
of service. 

But Bill wanted to know something and wanted 
to know it quickly. All the way home he had put 
himself up as the champion cad of the world and 
chucked great lumps of rock at his body. He was 
feeling both bashed and impatient. He stamped 
about like a fussy man shaking snow from his boots. 
A long and luscious snore issued. He drew a 
wicker table up and down twice, thereby making the 
sort of squeak that jerks the fillings out of teeth. 
Nothing happened. There was obviously only one 
thing left to do. He did it. A resounding bump, 
a roar of oaths, a slow but dignified* rise. . . . 
“ Good afternoon, sir.” 

“ Good afternoon. Where ’s everybody? ” 

“ Madam has driven over to the nurseries, sir, 
to see about those Japanese maples.” 

“ Well?” 

“ John is driving the Commodore and Lord Ed- 
ward in the opposite direction, sir, to take a look at 
the country.” 

“ Not Lord Edward. Major Jedburgh. He 
wishes it.” 

Albery’s eyebrows rose slightly and with them 
went his shoulders and then his hands. “ V ery good, 
sir. But can the Ethiopian change his skin or the 
leopard his spots ? ” 

“ What ’s to stop him? ” said Bill, “ It ’s a free 


192 


THE BLUE ROOM 


country. . . Where’s Marth — I mean Miss Wain 
— oh, it does n’t matter.” The screen door came 
back with a whang behind him and he stamped up- 
stairs to his rooms. It ’s curious how a man feels 
impelled to make a tremendous noise after under- 
going a bout of mental humiliation. Reaction 
brings with it, probably, a sort of “ Now then, who 
the devil says that I ’m taking this lying down. 
Hear me about unless you ’re deaf, can’t you? ” 

“ H’m,” said Albery to himself, as he replaced 
the furniture with minute accuracy, “ Bill ’s bumped 
up against a bit of the past to-day, that ’s certain. 
Don’t I know the feeling? ” A little smile fluttered 
over his face. 

Bill got out of his clothes and stood under a cold 
shower until every suggestion of the City was 
washed away. Then he dried his hair to re-wet it 
with a stinging hair- juice, and got into a pair of 
loose knickerbockers, a soft shirt with a small low 
collar, an easy coat and shoes a size too large. His 
mind could become even more hopelessly disorgan- 
ized if his body were completely comfortable. . . . 
Susie loved him. Martha did n’t. He did n’t love 
Susie and he did love Martha. He was wretched, 
he ’d had to make Susie wretched and if he could 
make Martha wretched that would be fine, — that 
is, — oh curse. . . . And having made Susie desper- 
ately unhappy and dashed her hopes and put bad 
thoughts into her mind, to say nothing of having 
made himself an infernal cad by his clumsy way of 
breaking things up and hinting at class differences 


THE BLUE ROOM 


193 


and that stuff, — if he had loved her would that 
have mattered? — What he asked himself now was 
“ Is it worth it? Is n’t this reconstruction business 
nothing but a dream? Can the Ethiopian change 
his skin or the leopard his spots ? They ’re not wild 
oats that I planted. They ’re mustard seed. Cut 
’em down, burn ’em out and up they come again. 
Susie is just as much mine now as ever she was. I 
took her and she ’s permanent. No Blue Room 
can shut her in. She ’s alive and about and will 
have to be watched. No one could keep her word 
better, but will painting do the trick? . . . Martha 
laughs. That ’s over. I cling to this pathetic idea 
of beginning again and playing up to mother and 
the old Dad and the traditions and start on the 
hunt for Miss Respectable. If I find her, or 
Mother produces her, and she ’s fool enough to take 
me on there ’s Martha stuck in my heart. ... It ’s 
no good. I must chuck it. The whole damned 
thing is n’t honest. I can’t reconstruct. I ’ve missed 
the chance of playing the game. Bill just can’t be 
a good boy now and that ’s all there is to it.” 

But when he wandered out and kicked himself 
from one lonely place to another, more depressed 
than ever because there was n’t a soul to make as 
wretched as he was, he thought suddenly of the 
bench beneath the Seven Sisters which was Martha’s 
favorite place, perked up at once and went off in 
long strides to see what he could do in that direction. 
She might laugh at him, and she was perfectly justi- 
fied. But perhaps there was something that he 


194 THE BLUE ROOM 

could say, with any luck, to give his depression to 
her. 

Yes, there was Martha. The primrose, as Teddy 
called her. He was good at exact descriptions. 
But she was n’t sitting on the bench as he had seen 
her so often, apparently waiting for something, as it 
had vaguely seemed to him. She was standing clear 
cut against the sky on the edge of the hill, straight, 
slight and gloriously young, without a hat, her hands 
clasped behind her back. She might have been 
throwing out a speech to the listening valley with 
words of scorn and impatience about Life. It was 
not a bit of good to her and she didn’t care who 
knew it. 

She heard him coming but made no move. Her 
heart jumped. That was all. He left the shade 
of the Seven Sisters and went out into the sun by 
her side. There they stood, with the world at their 
feet, silently. 

She had been thinking too, and was angry. Why 
was he hanging about the garden and the hill and 
fastening himself on her, when all the while his 
thoughts were far afield, searching. Pride did n’t 
permit any more of this humiliation. It must be 
brought to an end. “ Well,” she said, looking out 
at the procession of hills away in the distance. 
“ Have you been to town to find a girl, — the girl ? ” 

“ I don’t have to go to town to do that,” he said 
sharply. A nice lookout when she began to rot 
him right away. 

She turned, as cool as a fish, and ran her eyes over 


THE BLUE ROOM 


195 

him. Good Lord, how she reminded him of Susie 
Hatch by the angle of her chin. “ Is that so ? It ’s 
none of my business, but you can’t be said to show 
much keenness to see her, can you, — never leaving 
this place ? ” 

He hurled the ball back. “ Why should I leave 
this place? She doesn’t.” 

The lurking smile went out of her eyes. What 
did he mean? There was no girl, no other 
girl. . . . And then all the fog that had come be- 
tween them lifted and in the golden clearness of 
that afternoon she saw the man she loved and hun- 
gered for in all his humbleness and lack of courage. 
The air was filled with the rustling of wings and 
over the sinking sun the star came forth. ... It 
was for her to make him speak, and the woman in 
her reveled in the chance. He should pay a little 
for all her hours of anguish. 

“ Perhaps she only comes out at night, like the 
moon ? ” 

“ Don’t let ’s talk about it,” he said. “ It won’t 
do any good.” 

He was n’t to be allowed to get away like that. 
“ But you mystify me,” she said. “ Only yesterday 
you asked who was to take you seriously and talked 
about the difficulty of finding the girl. And now 
you say she ’s here. What exactly do you mean? ” 

Instead of infecting her with his depression he 
had made her gay, it seemed. Something had set 
her alight. She looked taller and behind the laugh 
in her eyes there were burning fires. He had never 


196 THE BLUE ROOM 

seen her look like that or felt so strongly the vitality 
of her youth. 

All right. He would tell her and the thing would 
be ended. His fatuous scheme of reconstruction 
would fall like an empty shell. “ I mean what I 
say,” he said, smarting under her levity. “She is 
here. She was here when I went away. She was 
here when I came back. I loved her when she came 
up to this hill. I ’ve loved her more and more ever 
since. But she does n’t give a single curse about me 
and that ends it. I wanted to settle down and plant 
roots and take a wife but as she won’t have me I ’m 
homeless and the thing ’s a dream.” He turned 
away like a boy. 

And she put her hand on his arm and turned him 
back. “ How do you know it ’s a dream ? How 
do you know she does n’t give a single curse if 
you have n’t spoken to her? ” 

He stared in amazement. 

And she threw out her arms with her face held 
up. He loved her as she insisted on being loved. 
Pride was n’t in this. “ Speak, speak,” she cried 
out, stamping her foot. “ Why waste this precious 
time?” 

One more blundering pause, — and then the cry, 
and the meeting of lips, and the welding of 
hearts. . . . 

Honesty? The hidden key of the Blue Room? 
Bosh! She loved him. She loved him. What 
had happened till then was his. What was to hap- 
pen from that hour onward was hers, — everything. 


PART V 


I 

At ten o’clock that night Bill Mortimer stalked 
into the drawing-room of the old house. 

To the white-haired lady, the Old Rip and the 
F :.ish Major who had been waiting for him without 
impatience, he looked rather like a sheepish boy. 
He was still wearing the clothes into which he had 
changed that afternoon. His dark crisp hair 
seemed still to have in it the breeze of a three hours’ 
exultant drive in an open car. His eyes were 
sparkling, and round his mouth there was the smile 
that is only to be found on the face of a mere lad 
who has just kissed his first sweetheart. 

In no mood for anything so prosaic as to sit down 
to dinner he had almost taken a flying header from 
the hill of the Seven Sisters as soon as Martha had 
torn herself away; left a message with Albery that 
he would be back before ten and driven himself 
about the surrounding country with a total and 
reckless disregard for speed limits, — going almost 
indeed as fast as his thoughts. Only by the luck 
of lovers and drunkards had he escaped arrest and 


198 


THE BLUE ROOM 


accident. And now, here he was, with his head in 
the clouds and his feet nowhere near the earth, to 
break the momentous news to his family of his 
engagement to Martha. 

The whole fun of the thing lay in the fact that, 
unknown to the ecstatic Bill, the family and Teddy 
Jedburgh knew precisely what he had come to tell 
them. It had happened that Mrs. Mortimer, on her 
return from the Nurseries, had climbed the hill and 
seen Martha in Bill’s arms, making a picture up there 
against the sunset which had filled her with inde- 
scribable joy. She had crept away, performed a 
feat of self-restraint unique in the history of 
women by bottling up her news until dinner was 
over and then sprung it upon the Commodore and 
Bill’s pal in the seclusion of the drawing-room. It 
must have been a sight to see the effect of it on the 
Old Rip. Regardless of corsets and forgetful of 
gout the ancient but elegant roysterer had sprung 
to his feet and executed a delirious pas-seul in the 
middle of the room. He had danced until his 
breath had given out. He had then skidded on one 
of the rugs and, before he could be caught by Jed- 
burgh, had measured his length on the floor with 
the latter half of his body well under a china cabinet. 
It was one of those horribly comic incidents which 
draw a scream of laughter but leave a sense of 
consternation. Finally, peace restored, and the re- 
covery assisted by a nip of rare old brandy, the two 
excited conspirators had taken Jedburgh into their 
confidence and had laid all the details of their little 


THE BLUE ROOM 199 

plot bare before him. He had listened to the story 
of their one remaining ambition with mixed feel- 
ings, because Martha was the only girl who had 
done strange things to his heart. Homeless him- 
self, but with the home feeling strong upon him, his 
sympathies were all with the old people and Bill, 
who had achieved, as usual, whatever luck was 
going. In his characteristically generous and loyal 
way he rejoiced in Bill’s success and refused to al- 
low himself to look through the narrow window in 
his high wall at a long vista of lonely years. 

Mrs. Mortimer, so happy that the abominable 
ravages of time had faded temporarily from her 
face, had taken charge. “ Now, Barclay,” she had 
said, “ keep up the good work, my dear. I am 
proud of the masterly way in which you hkve stood 
aloof all this month. When Bill comes in continue to 
know nothing. Let him go on believing that Martha 
is his own discovery and that we have had noth- 
ing to do with this matrimonial scheme. Do every- 
thing you can to preserve the bloom of this romance 
of his, which means so much to the poor old boy. 
We will all profess the surprise and delight that he 
will expect us to show, although not, perhaps, to the 
extent of indulging in another imitation of Ne jin- 
sky. That ’s a little too expensive.” 

“ You ’re right, my love,” the Commodore had 
replied, laying a rueful hand on the small of his 
back. “ You shall see me act instead. I will give 
you a dash of Guitry, Hawtrey, and Henry Miller. 

I never conceived the possibility of Bill’s taking 


200 


THE BLUE ROOM 

himself so seriously. It ’s exactly what we 
want, of course, but is it war, middle thirties, or 
what? ” 

“ All three, and a combination of several other re- 
actions, and all of them have played into our hands. 
By the grace of propinquity we may now be able to 
listen to the lusty cries of a grandchild before we 
make room for the next occupants.” 

“ By the grace of God,” the Old Rip had corrected, 
with that extreme of reverence that goes with men 
who take to kneeling only when it doesn’t matter 
how much their trousers bag. 

Bill caught the three pairs of deliberately incuri- 
ous eyes, gave his inevitable grin and took his place 
with his back to the empty fire grate. All about 
him still were the thrill and passion and surprise and 
wonder of the moment when he had looked down 
into the face of that young sweet thing and found 
her eyes so dark with the depth of her love that 
he had faltered and stood humble. He had caught 
her as she had almost fainted with emotion and 
kissed the color into her cheeks and held her tight 
so that the fire of his blood should warm her back to 
life. The scent of her hair clung to him and her 
little cry still rang in his ears. He did n’t try to 
speak lightly because he knew that what he had come 
to say meant almost as much to the old people as it 
meant to himself. 

“ I ’m sorry I could n’t join you at dinner,” he 
began. 

“ Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all,” said the 


THE BLUE ROOM 201 

Commodore, catching a yawn. That was his Haw- 
trey touch. 

“ We missed you, Bill darling,” said the white- 
haired lady. 

“ But it gave me the opportunity of blowing a 
trumpet about your soldiering,” put in Jedburgh. 

There would have been a short silence but for the 
raucous chorus of near-by frogs. 

“ I have something to tell you,” said Bill, “ that 
will amaze you all.” 

“ You don’t say so,” said the Commodore, lean- 
ing forward with his hands on his knees in the 
Guitry manner. 

Mrs. Mortimer steadied her voice. “ My dear 
Bill, what can it be ? ” 

“ Break it to us, old thing,” chimed in Jedburgh, 
playing up. 

“ Martha and I are engaged to be married,” said 
Bill, coming to it full tilt. 

There was a beautiful pause, — the three listeners 
acting the amazement which Bill was so keen to 
achieve with a quite professional sense of drama. 
With a huge effort the Old Rip held himself in to 
allow his wife the first expression of congratulation. 
He knew women and was a gallant fellow. Drop- 
ping her camouflage the mother rose, fluttered 
across the room to her big foolish boy, put her arms 
round his neck and kissed him. The month’s sus- 
pense and anxiety and impatience had culminated 
in success. It was a great moment. Unable to 
trust himself tQ speak Barclay Mortimer grasped 


202 


THE BLUE ROOM 


his son’s hands, and turned to his wife. For once 
he was unable to translate himself into a little 
flowery speech, but in the deep bow that he gave 
her all his thanks and admiration were laid at her 
feet. 

Finally Jedburgh went forward. “ I ’m very 
glad, old son,” he said simply. “ I hope you will 
both know nothing but happiness.” 

Martha, the primrose, the incarnation of his 
dreams. . . . 


II 

Once more, these two men who had come out of 
the shambles of death to make the most of the life 
which they had been permitted to retain, the one 
eager to go straight, the other unable to go crooked, 
sat late. 

The irony of the fact that Bill loved and was 
loved by the girl who alone could have given Jed- 
burgh the home that he pined for was not brought 
out. All that was an accident, a trick, one of those 
damnable tangents which Fate delights in turning 
life into from time to time, just apparently to make 
things more difficult. Or, perhaps, in order to test 
character by offering temptation and to strengthen 
the spirit by giving pain. Who can say? It was n’t 
for Jedburgh to drag in himself and his feelings. 
In any case Martha was in a preserve into which he 
had no right to trespass. So he put the primrose 
into his heart and locked her in. 

" If you were the ordinary cove,” said Bill, re- 


203 


THE BLUE ROOM 

loading his pipe, “ you ’d have a fit at all this emo- 
tion-stuff.” 

“ Why, my dear old thing ? ” 

They were in the morning room now. It was 
smaller and less formal than the drawing-room, more 
in the nature of a den. Few men can get down to 
things and find anything comfortable to sit on in a 
drawing-room. To smoke a pipe in such a place, 
even if it consents to draw there, is as bad as laugh- 
ing in church. 

“ Why, it probably would seem that we were 
making much ado about very little. A man gets 
en £ a £ e d to a girl, — it ’s done every minute of the 
day. It ’s one of the popular pastimes, and either 
leads to a light-hearted marriage that can be broken 
at will or goes no further than a few kisses, a few 
presents and a fairly quick awakening. And in any 
case I suppose lots of people would burst into 
hoarse laughter at the sight of a house of three 
worldlings elevating love to a position of supreme 
importance at a moment when the whole earth is 
going from bad to worse under the misdirection of 
the same damn fool politicians whose impotence 
brought about the war.” 

“ Yes, but for all the laughter of jackasses love 
is a matter of supreme importance whatever may be 
the state of the world. The poor old world would 
very quickly become normal if that point were gen- 
erally realized. The one great philosopher taught 
us the simple truth pretty well at the beginning of 
things and died on the cross to prove it. Don’t be- 


204 


THE BLUE ROOM 


come self -analytical, Bill. Thank your stars that 
everything is going well, see that it continues to go 
well and let the hoarse laughter of cynics blow away 
like smoke.” 

Bill got up and began to walk about. “ I can’t 
help being self-conscious about all this,” he said, 
with a deep line of worry on his forehead, “ because 
I want things to continue to go well so frightfully 
much. It ’s true that Martha loves me, — a thing 
it ’s pretty hard to realize. But what are her people 
going to say? I ’ve got to march into the Wain- 
wrights’ house and get the once-over from a couple 
of anxious parents, Teddy. There I shall stand, 
quaking like a criminal, trying to look ten years 
younger than I am and putting on the air of some- 
one just out of the egg. Wain wright will have a 
perfect right to put me through the third degree. 
If he ’s anything like the father he ’s made out to be 
he probably will. That means that I shall have to 
dodge his questions and go forward through a 
jungle of lies or own up and either get told off or 
marry Martha against the wishes of her parents. 
See that? It’s natural enough for my people to 
pooh-pooh all this, and even to contend that the 
modern girl is inclined to think all the more of a 
man who has knocked about. Their one remaining 
ambition is to secure the future of the family at any 
cost. I believe that, if things go through, I can 
make Martha so happy in the present that she won’t 
want to go foraging into the past. All the same, 
there is a new and upsetting germ of honesty in the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


205 


back of my brain that persists in telling me that I 
am taking advantage of Martha’s love and putting 
her to a very obvious sacrifice. I ’m a battered 
thirty-four and she ’s a perfectly spotless nineteen. 
She has nothing to remember or regret and I have 
a cursed Blue Room full of memories, and the out- 
standing point is that she is not the average sophisti- 
cated unserious girl of whom my mother speaks. 
In a sort of way she’s a freak, as girls go to-day. 
She’s been brought up off the map among exactly 
the same traditions that have made you what you 
are. That ’s great, and I ’m thankful for it. I 
don’t look at marriage with the eyes of a bachelor. 
My wife has to be unlike any girl I ’ve ever met, 
Miss Respectable in fact. But is that fair ? ” 

He came to a halt in front of the sofa upon which 
Jedburgh had made himself comfortable. He had 
jerked out all these sentences on his to-and-fro prowl. 
And now he came to the big point, the sum total of 
the thing that had put that deep line on his forehead. 

“ Shall I play the game according to Hoyle or 
not? Shall I make a clean breast of it to Martha 
and run the risk of smashing her illusions — or let 
things go ? That ’s what I want you to tell me, 
Teddy. Yesterday you advised me to board up my 
old Blue Room and said that it had been done be- 
fore. I know it has. But I want you, knowing 
everything from our point of view, to take the 
Wainwright side. You ’re the only man whose 
final judgment is any good to me.” 

This was a mighty large order. . . . There was 


206 


THE BLUE ROOM 


no man alive whom Jedburgh liked more than Bill 
Mortimer. He knew him for a first-rate sportsman 
and one who had taken into his war service a consis- 
tent cheeriness and an utter disregard for self that 
had acted like magic on his regiment. He had 
found him out to be a kind-hearted, generous, 
simple-minded, homogeneous fellow, with all the 
normal weaknesses of sound and healthy men and 
one or two facets to his character, such as sentiment 
and a longing for children which, if properly de- 
veloped, would put him up several pegs. He had 
seen him under the influence of what he had called 
the prodigal son’s longing to indulge in an orgy of 
reconstruction, to build a church out of the ruins 
of his past. And he was in deep sympathy with all 
that. But he was now asked to sit in judgment of 
a case which affected the whole future happiness of 
a girl whose love he would have given some years 
of his life to have won, — a girl who had earned 
the right to be taken into marriage by a younger 
man with no Blue Room in his house, and he could 
only do so by totally eliminating himself, which was 
not easy. But he would do his best and give Bill 
the advice that he needed from the ordinary sane 
point of view. 

“ I don’t see that you will achieve anything by 
making a clean breast of it, except to hurt Martha,” 
he said. “ She loves you and will marry you in 
spite of everything. Much better let the dead past 
bury its dead and leave your romance undamaged. 
You will pay your bill in regrets. Why ask her to 


THE BLUE ROOM 


207 


share in the payment? Let her off, my dear chap, 
and see to it that you devote the life that you make 
over to her entirely to her happiness. You can’t 
do more than that. Cease feeling your own pulse 
and go ahead healthily. Your new leaf is clean and 
full of promise. That seems to me the normal way 
to look at it.” 

Bill heaved a big sigh of relief and sat down. 
The worried line faded away. He had asked for 
advice and received the only kind that he recognized 
instantly as good because it was precisely what he 
desired to have. He had not been wrong in bank- 
ing on Jedburgh’s wisdom and friendship. 

“ Thanks, Teddy,” he said. “ And now things 
shall begin to move. I am going to wangle things 
so that the marriage shall take place within a month. 
You ’ll be my best man, of course? ” 

“ Of course,” said Jedburgh, without the flicker of 
an eyelid. 

Ill 

Things began to move the following evening, 
which was Saturday. 

Bill escorted his mother into the drawing room 
after dinner, made her comfortable on her favorite 
sofa, waited until the old man had settled down to 
listen to one of Jedburgh’s outbursts on the piano, 
and then bent over the white-haired lady. 

“So long, Mum,” he said. “If you’ll excuse 
me I ’m afraid I shall have to leave you for the rest 
of the evening,” 


208 THE BLUE ROOM 

Mrs. Mortimer smiled and put his hand against 
her cheek. 

“ No, nothing so good as that/’ he said, catch- 
ing in her eyes a picture of the hill and of Martha 
with her head on his shoulder. 

“ What then?” she asked. 

“ Nothing can go at my pace until I ’ve asked the 
father's permission to marry his daughter in the 
good old way. So I ’m off to the house to get it 
over.” He made a most rueful face. 

This time Mrs. Mortimer laughed. How like a 
boy Bill looked, standing there in a blue funk. She 
did n’t see anything to be nervous about. Was 
there a father on earth who would n’t jump at her 
son as a husband for his daughter ? She would like 
to see such a man. “ I had forgotten all about that 
ceremony,” she said. 

“ I know. But I took the idea of it to bed last 
night and have been worrying out the proper speech 
the whole blessed day. Everything I ’ve rehearsed 
will fly out of the top of my head the minute I stand 
on the mat, though. Whoo, but I Ve got the needle. 
However, I called up Tom Wain wright this morn- 
ing and put him wise. He ’s been playing golf with 
his father all the afternoon and swore that he ’d 
boost me a bit, — of course not saying a word about 
the engagement. It may make things a bit easier, 
don’t you think so ? ” 

The white-haired lady put her lips to the hand 
that had clutched her finger in the days when she 
was not much older than Martha, the memories of 


THE BLUE ROOM 


209 


which had come back to her very strongly and 
sweetly during the last month. It was nothing new 
to play second fiddle to another woman. Bill had 
replaced her very early in his career. But some- 
how, at that moment, after having enjoyed his 
affection and dependence for a whole month, she 
could n’t help feeling jealous of this girl who had 
brought him to his knees, unreasonable as it was. 
The whole scheme had been hers, — the necessary 
step to the fulfillment of her last desire. “ Poor old 
mother,” she whispered, turning a sob into one of 
her soft laughs. 

Bill did n’t understand. He thought that age 
was being resented, and as this was one of his own 
grievances he bent down again and left on the 
withered cheek a kiss that was very full of sym- 
pathy. And the poor old mother interpreted this in 
the way it read best to her and was humbly grateful. 
The rewards of motherhood are like the rewards of 
fighting men, — afterthoughts conferred reluctantly. 

The Old Rip, looking startlingly young in the 
Cathedral light at the piano end of the drawing- 
room, was absorbed in Jedburgh’s improvising. He 
had got up and was leaning on the instrument, a 
graceful if somewhat too waisted figure. The false 
brown of his hair and mustache appeared to be less 
dead at that distance and his skin less meticulously 
tightened up by astringents and the energy of Den- 
ham’s fingers. So Bill went out without disturbing 
him. “ Good God,” he thought, passing through 
the scented garden, “ shall I have to make myself 


210 


THE BLUE ROOM 


look like that at his age? Martha, the old man’s 
darling! ...” 

However, as Teddy Jedburgh had advised, he was 
not going to feel his own pulse or go forward with 
his eyes turned over his shoulder, in the manner of 
Lot’s wife. He was determined to go straight 
ahead, with a rush, carrying Martha with him. The 
new leaf was clean and full of promise. It was his 
business to see that good things only were printed 
upon it. He ran across the frontier of the two 
places, the irresistible Bill Mortimer grin on his 
good-looking face, his teeth gleaming under his 
small mustache. Thirty-four? What of it! He 
was utterly young, absurdly young, and sound in 
wind and limb. He felt like a first-year undergrad- 
uate keeping tryst with his best girl. But he 
slowed down and felt the needle again, sewing him 
through the solar plexus, when he came into the 
lights of the Wainwright house. 

And he drew up for a moment, not quite sure 
that he would n’t bolt back and send a letter instead. 
The house struck him as being disturbingly Wain- 
wrightian, forthright and upstanding, new and with- 
out anything to hide. Its architect was an old 
friend of Wainwright’s. He had consciously de- 
signed it to fit the character of its owner. It had 
no frills. He had worked in no period stuff, given 
it no broken roof line or rounded corners ; indulged 
in no narrow and suspicious front door with a queer 
knocker; no slit windows with bottle glass. He had 
set it down, in a wide bare space, frank and uncom- 


THE BLUE ROOM 211 

promising, square, large, and defying criticism, its 
wide bald front door led up to by wide bald steps. 
It was essentially a house rather than merely a home, 
the house of a man who had no broken roof lines or 
rounded corners in his life, who had nothing to hide 
behind period stuff and bottle glass windows. . . . 
A victrola was at work. The tune of a lilting fox- 
trot came through one of the open windows. The 
click of billiard balls came too. . . . “Now then, 
Bill, you blighter. No jibbing. Take the jump 
with a bit over.” He hunted for the bell, a thing all 
architects take a mischievous delight in hiding in 
the most unlikely place. And it seemed to ring and 
reverberate through the world. None too quickly 
the door was opened by a resentful girl brought 
away from a game of “ Old Maid ” with the gro- 
cer’s delivery man. Martha halted on the stairs, 
with her heart in her mouth. . . . He had come to 
ask father, and mother was in the billiard room — 
and they were both stiff-backed about the Morti- 
mers ! 

Bill was shown into the drawing-room, but before 
he could give himself another mental jerk lips were 
on his lips and arms clasped tightly round his neck 
and a little heart thumping against his chest. “ Oh 
Bill, you darling ! ” 

“ I ’ve come to do it,” he said. 

She caught something of his nervousness. 
“ You ’re not afraid? ” 

He put his mouth to her 
the bluest funk of my life.” 


ear. 


Babe, I’m in 


212 


THE BLUE ROOM 


And they stood, close together, like the children 
in the wood, seeing vague shapes of trouble, until 
Martha caught the comic side of it all and threw 
back her head and laughed. Major Bill Mortimer, 
hero, knight, lover, come to ask for the Wainwright 
kid and afraid ! It was too funny for words. 

Then Tom dashed in and found Bill examining 
the contents of the Atlantic Monthly and Martha 
putting a photograph straight on an octagonal table. 

“ Oh hello, Major,” he cried out, his round face 
shining. “This is the best thing that ever hap- 
pened. Come along to the billiard room and 
meet . . .” 

“Right,” said Bill. “Wait a second. Er . . . 
did you manage . . .” 

“ You bet I did. It ’s easy. It ’s a walk-over. 
Come on.” And as Martha led the way, with her 
eyes like stars, her lips a little apart and her young 
breast rising and falling, Tom clutched at her hand 
and gave her an emotional wink. If he had been 
given the choice of every man alive as the one to 
take his sister he would have plumped for good old 
Bill. Did n’t he know him backwards under con- 
ditions that find out the sort of stuff a man is made 
of? 

Down for the first time for some weeks, Mrs. 
Wainwright sat with a rug over her knees and a 
shawl round her shoulders. She might have been 
twin sister to the model who sat for the woman in 
Millais’ pictures. All about her there was the air of 
a Madonna who knew the price of eggs and had 


213 


THE BLUE ROOM 

no intention of being “ done ” by anybody. Her 
face grew a shade more pale as the son of those 
blameworthy Mortimers came in with her two chil- 
dren. Something in Martha’s eyes made her catch 
her breath. 

“ Mother, you know Major Mortimer? ” 

“ No. I have not had that pleasure.” The little 
woman had the fighting spirit. 

Bill bowed over her hand and murmured a stere- 
otyped phrase. Here was antagonism. 

“ Dad, you ’ve met — ” 

Wainwright held out a cordial hand. “ Never,” 
he said. “ I much regret to say. But I am ex- 
tremely glad to do so now. You know my daugh- 
ter, Major Mortimer?” It was a perfectly guile- 
less lapse of memory. He had forgotten for the mo- 
ment that Martha and Tom had recently dined at 
the Mortimer house and all that. 

But it staggered Bill. Great Heaven, what a 
jump he had to take. He might have fallen from 
Mars. The only bright speck on the horizon was 
provided by Tom, who stood beaming upon him. 
Martha fluttered about, trying to hide excitement 
under a mask of casualness. 

Bill could see, plainly enough, that although Mr. 
Wainwright accepted his visit in the friendliest way 
and without any suspicion of its object, Mrs. Wain- 
wright’s eyes were upon him like those of a mother 
fox at the approach of a hound. Intuition had told 
her that he had come after her girl. All over her 
pretty pale face was the question, “ How far has 


214 


THE BLUE ROOM 

this gone ? ” Bill would have preferred to have 
been under the bombs of enemy aircraft, even. 

The room was a large one, cheerful and comfort- 
able, a combination of sitting-room and billiard 
room. It boasted one of those huge uncompro- 
mising stone fireplaces with which nothing earthly 
can be done and a collection of very red and white 
pictures of the Pickwick period, with fat horses, and 
rosy maids, and waggling cobble-stones and three- 
bottle-men illustrating the good old times in a bland 
and childlike manner that had its charm. 

Tom rushed chairs forward, cigars and cigarettes, 
and for a long half hour there was general conversa- 
tion which went from the golf course to weather, 
from President Wilson to the League of Nations. 
When Bill faltered under the minute examination 
of Mrs. Wainwright Tom plunged in like a porpoise 
and away it went again, Wainwright more and more 
taken by the visitor’s good looks, modesty, and de- 
lightful though only occasional grin. And all the 
while Martha continued to flutter, now sitting on 
the arm of her mother’s chair, now standing with her 
hand on her father’s shoulder, saying nothing but 
looking a dictionary. 

And just as Bill was coming to the conclusion that 
he would have to perform a strategic retreat and 
write a letter under the supervision of the Old Rip, 
Tom, a born soldier, acted on his own initiative and 
created a diversion. He sprang to his feet. “ Dad,” 
he said, “ how about taking the Major into your den 
for a bit. I was telling him of the war relics that 


THE BLUE ROOM 215 

you Ve collected. He ’s frightfully keen to see 
them. ,, 

Mr. Wainwright was up at once. He was proud 
of his German helmets and iron crosses and always 
glad to show off the room that he considered to be 
the nicest in the house. “ Come along then, 
Major,” he said. “ No doubt you Ve seen a better 
lot than I Ve been able to get together, but one or 
two of the things are interesting, especially the diaiy 
of a Hun flying man that was given to me by a 
nephew of mine who found it in No Man’s Land.” 

Bill followed him out, giving Tom one quick sig- 
nal of thanks, but not daring to look at Martha. 
Mrs. Wainwright’s eyes were still upon him. Here 
was his only chance. If there had been the rudi- 
ments of ordinary social hypocrisy in his soul he 
would have begun by saying, “ Ah, this is a corking 
room,” and insisted on inspecting the den from 
corner to corner with growing enthusiasm. Also, 
he would have made several not too subtle refer- 
ences to his host’s high reputation and dragged in a 
purely imaginary tag of conversation overheard at 
the Country Club as to the excellence of his golf. 
All this to prepare the way for his bolt from the 
blue. But Bill was not made of this stuff. He had 
never played the lap dog or picked up the tricks of 
the glib society parasite. So what he did was to 
close the door, plant himself in front of Martha’s 
father, give himself a metaphorical jab with the 
spurs, and blunder head first into the thing that sat 
so heavily on his chest. 


216 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Mr. Wainwright,” he said, putting his hands in 
his pockets and holding on to the floor with his feet, 
“ I love Martha most awfully and I want you to be 
good enough to let her marry me. I ought to say 
that I ’ve spoken to Martha and that she ’s ready to 
take the risk — I mean willing to undergo 
the . . .” The Bill grin followed on the heels 
T)f a wave of color that ran up to his forehead. 
He cleared his throat and took the finish hard. 
“ In fact, she loves me and if you ’ve no objection 
we should like to make plans to be married right 
away.” 

An equally simple man, devoid of social veneer, 
Wainwright gasped. This was indeed a bolt from 
the blue. It had occurred to him vaguely at odd 
moments that Martha would one day be carried out 
of his life and home and he had turned cold at the 
thought of the appalling gap that she would leave 
in them. But this was sprung so suddenly, without 
a preliminary hint. He knew nothing of this man 
except that he was a noted polo-player, Tom’s Major, 
the son of two notorious people whose lives had run 
on totally different rails from his own, — that he 
was, although palpably a gentleman and a very win- 
ning person, years older than his little girl. . . . 

“ Good God,” he said, standing aghast. 

And there was one of those strange silences dur- 
ing which it is popularly supposed that an angel 
passes over the grave of a seaman, — though why 
a seaman necessarily nobody seems to know. And 
during this the two men held each other’s eyes, the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


217 


one deeply disappointed at the reception given to his 
question, the other trying to find himself in a blank 
maze among all the windings of which Martha, the 
cheerful dependable Martha, the apple of his eye, 
was missing. 

“ You don’t like the idea,” said Bill, finally. 

And that brought Wainwright back into the pres- 
ent with a thud. Good Lord, what had he said? 
“ I never suggested that,” he answered, nervously. 
“You caught me in the wind, I think. Honestly, 
you ’re the last man — ” 

“ Say it,” said Bill. 

“ Well, then, with apologies, you ’re not my idea 
of the man Martha would come to me about, Major 
Mortimer. When I thought about it at all, which, 
selfishly enough, I ’ve tried not to do, I saw a young, 
— a younger fellow, the son of a man of my own 
class, in business, building up a career, and all that. 
You don’t work — I ’ve got to say this — and my 
wife will be afraid that the example of the Commo- 
dore — No, I can’t go on.” 

Good Lord, he was going to ask for the key of the 
Blue Room! . . . “Yes, go on,” said Bill. 

“ Sit down,” said Mr. Wainwright. He pointed 
to a chair and placed another near by . . . With- 
out trying this man made himself liked. He had 
straight eyes and was a sportsman. He made it 
possible to talk the A B C of things without jug- 
gling with words. He certainly could offer Martha 
pretty well everything there was from the worldly 
point of view, — money, leisure, travel, and pres- 


218 


THE BLUE ROOM 


ently the old house. Tom was crazy about him, and 
he ought to know. He had been a fine soldier, up- 
holding the honor of the United States. . . . 

“ I ’ve just this to say, and nothing else really 
matters.” A little tremble crept into Wainwright’s 
voice. “ Martha has n’t known any men, living out 
here, beyond the commuting lines. She was barely 
seventeen at the time we went into the war, — two 
years late, and with Tom in it and his young friends 
joining up, she had less chance than ever to measure 
men and come to conclusions. Then you come 
back, Tom’s Major, of whom he had written in 
glowing terms, and find her in a state of khaki 
ecstasy, and it may be — and I’m afraid of this, 
deadly afraid, Mortimer — that unless you give her 
time to get back to normal she may wake up when 
it s too late. I have to speak like this. She means 
— I can’t say how much to me. But if her love for 
you is the big thing — ” 

“ Ask her,” said Bill, eagerly. 

After a moment’s hesitation, Wainwright got up, 
went to the door, called, came back and stood look- 
ing at Bill in a curious half wistful half resentful 
way, hoping that he was all right for Martha’s sake, 
feeling that he had come to steal the most precious 
thing in that house. 

Martha flew in like a bird, shut the door, went 
straight to her father and put her face against his 
shoulder. There was a strong light on the banker’s 
fine, well-balanced face, too deeply lined and too 
white at the temples for a man of his years. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


219 


Bill was up, waiting. He was without fear. 
Yesterday, on the hill, as the sun was going down, 
there had been something in Martha’s eyes that al- 
lowed him now to stake his soul on the depth of her 
love. 

But before Wainwright could find further words 
the door was opened again, and his wife came into 
the room, paler than ever, but with a firm step and 
the halo of motherhood about her pretty head. 

“Why am I left out? ” she asked. 

In three strides Bill was at her side. He drew 
her hand through his arm and led her down. 

“ Mother,” said Wainwright, “ Major Mortimer 
has come to ask us for Martha. I called her in to 
tell me if she is quite certain that he is the man for 
her, absolutely sure of herself. If so there is noth- 
ing for us to do to keep her, nothing for us to say, 
except good luck.” 

Mrs. Wainwright gave a strange cry, freed her- 
self from Bill and held out her arms. It was not 
the mother who held her child, but Martha who held 
the little delicate woman whose work she had done, 
whose prop she had been, and who, in the nature of 
things, must do without her soon when the nest was 
deserted. 

And all three listened to an outburst of young 
lyrical passion that shook their hearts and stirred 
their blood. 

“ He is the man for me, the only man in this 
world. Night and day for two years, night and 
day, I ’ve loved and waited and prayed, in agony and 


220 


y 

THE BLUE ROOM 

anguish, and if he had never come back I should 
have loved and waited and prayed again, night and 
day for the rest of my life. And if he d come back 
and passed me by I should have gone on doing my 
job, but in agony and anguish, night and day, for he 
is the only man in this world for me.” 

And then, kissing her and clinging for a moment 
in a sort of despair, Mrs. Wainwright turned to 
Bill and stood back as white as a lily. “ She is 
yours,” she said. 

And Bill looked at Wainwright, who nodded and 
tried to smile. It was a poor effort. The den must 
lose its partner. 

And like a bird again Martha flew into Bill’s arms 
and held up her face. 

And the mother went to her husband for com- 
fort. 


IV 

After that Bill continued his policy of wangling 
with an amount of nervous energy that put both 
houses into a fever of movement. Having obtained 
the consent of the Wainwright parents to his en- 
gagement, — a tremendous step in the right direc- 
tion and one that left innumerable bunkers behind, 

he decided to strike while the irons were hot and 

bring the date of the wedding nearer by two weeks. 
This was not going to be an easy business, because 
Mrs. Wainwright held old-fashioned ideas on the 
question of a trousseau, and having faced the in- 
evitable might insist upon indulging in an orgy of 


THE BLUE ROOM 


221 


sentimental femininity which could only be satisfied 
by a riot of dressmaking and a long list of visits to 
department stores. 

Martha was willing to walk out at any moment, 
find a church and get married. Had n’t she been 
waiting for two years and a month? And Bill, to 
whom every moment had become precious, would 
have urged this easy course but for the advice of his 
mother. “ Dear Bill,” she said, with the impatient 
man pacing the room and wrecking the peace of the 
old quiet house, “ we must consider the feelings of 
Mrs. Wainwright. She has inherited a certain Jane 
Austenism from her Boston relatives and won’t be- 
lieve that this marriage is made in Heaven unless 
Martha has at least four full trunks of perfectly new 
things. Once Boston always Boston, you know 
that. She has only just recovered from a long ill- 
ness and is still delicate and frail. On top of this 
she has been suddenly tossed into a state of mental 
chaos, at the bottom of which there is a very natural 
fear as to the wisdom of letting her little girl slip 
out of her righteous home into that of those wicked 
Mortimers. A month must seem to her to be al- 
most indecent haste. What the poor dear lady 
will say to a fortnight I really dare not think.” 

“Well, can’t you see her,” said Bill, “and get on 
her soft side by saying that July honeymoons are 
lucky, or something. She may be superstitious. I 
am and so ’s Martha. We’re frightfully nervous 
about August, and of course September is simply 
asking for it. Martha has two absolutely new 


222 


THE BLUE ROOM 


frocks, she tells me, and loads of the other things. 
She could dash into town and fill a van with clothes 
in three hours. I ’d go with her and help her 
choose them.” 

“ A most immoral idea. For pity’s sake don’t 
suggest such a proceeding. Besides, why give away 
the fact that you know anything about what girls 
wear? Leave it to me, Bill. Mr. and Mrs. Wain- 
wright are coming to dinner to-night with Tom and 
the dear child and I will see what can be done to — 
what ’s the word that you ’ve brought back ? — 
wangle things your way.” 

“ Great work ! ” said Bill, and disappeared at a 
run. He was going riding with Martha in half an 
hour. There was no time to lose. 

It was lucky for the Old Rip that he had stopped 
for a moment to admire himself in the glass in the 
hall. Otherwise there would have been a collision 
at the door. He had just performed his morning 
two-mile walk up and down the long drive from the 
house to the gates, followed under protest by his old 
water-spaniel which took no further exercise for the 
day on any pretext. Made up for a warm morning 
in a blue flannel suit with brass buttons and brown 
and white shoes that were the bane of Denham’s 
life, the Commodore did not feel as cool as he 
looked. The routine had gone to the winds. The 
beautiful regularity and smoothness of pre-Bill days 
had been suddenly shattered. That boy, being 
officially engaged, now broke all the laws, had come 
late to breakfast, left before it had run its courses. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


223 


and was more like a kite without a tail than anything 
else. “ It is appalling/’ the Old Rip said to himself, 
“and completely undermines all Denham’s work on 
my face. However, it is for the good of the family, 
and it ’s about time I placed that before mere per- 
sonal comfort. My reformation is complete.” 

Mrs. Mortimer welcomed him with a smile of 
quite genuine admiration, and, it being desirable to 
cajole him into his best temper for the trying even- 
ing that was to come, translated it into words. 
“ My dear Barclay, you really are a most wonderful 
person. I thought Bill had come back until I real- 
ized that you alone among men wore clothes so 
well.” 

The old fellow preened himself at the double 
compliment. Nothing could have given him greater 
delight. He raised his wife’s hand to his lips as 
only he, and the unessential husband of the dear 
dead Italian, could do it. But the last remnants of 
a never very keen sense of humor bubbled up un- 
expectedly. “My love,” he said, “continue to say 
those charming things to me, but accept my promise 
at once to face our exemplary neighbors with the 
utmost tact and diplomacy. In one evening I guar- 
antee to prove how cruel and wicked is the tongue 
of gossip. If Mrs. Wainwright does not take home 
with her a new opinion of me that will make her 
deeply regret her preconceived ideas I will eat my 
Panama hat cooked as a cereal.” He chuckled like 
a sardonic parrot which had spent most of its re- 
ceptive life in the cabin of a sea captain. 


224 


THE BLUE ROOM 


The white-haired lady gave a little laugh. “ As 
I have often said before, Barclay, you ought to have 
been either a bishop or an ambassador. I think that 
if I wear my plainest dress and no jewelry, we tell 
Albery to serve nothing but a little Burgundy and we 
both refrain with grim determination from talking 
of anything but purely local things there will be a 
chance of our getting through the evening by the 
skin of our teeth. The last time I played the part 
of Plain Woman was at the house in New York 
when as Chairman of the Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Principles of Moral Conduct among the 
Mixed Choirs of the Country I entertained the 
members at tea.” 

And then, by mutual consent, these two people 
who had been forced to become mere observers of 
life and could very easily see the end of the road 
when they had the courage to look in that direction, 
dropped artificiality. In a sort of way they went 
together from the metaphorical stage on which they 
did their daily stunts for each other’s entertainment 
and sat in a room behind the scenes — perfectly 
natural and human creatures for a brief space, anx- 
ious to do everything to push forward the marriage 
that was so vital to their plans. 

“I’m scared about to-night, Lylyth,” the old man 
said. “ I want desperately for everything to go 
without a hitch. I hope to God I shan’t say or do 
anything to jar Mrs. Wainwright and make her put 
a spoke in the wheel. Do you think I ’d better be 
unwell and spend the evening upstairs ? ” 


THE BLUE ROOM 225 

“But why, Barclay? You wouldn’t desert me, 
surely ? ” 

“Good Lord, no. Only, — well, to tell the bit- 
ter truth, my dear, I caught something that was 
said about me at the Country Club yesterday by a 
man of the Wainwright type, — I mean the hard- 
working, self-made, backbone-of-the-country man 
who has an absolute and perfectly natural contempt 
for one who never did a stroke of work in his life 
except in the way of enjoyment. 4 God,’ he said, 
hardly waiting for me to pass, 4 what a comic.’ 
H’h . . . . Well, it might do Bill and the cause a 
service if I withheld myself from this first meeting 
and left you to do the honors and break down the 
prejudices. Tell me frankly, Lylyth. Never mind 
my feelings, my dear. I ’m all out for Bill.” 

But Mrs. Mortimer had none of the deadly hon- 
esty that goes with the power to hurt. The absence 
of this falsely youthful man with the elaborate man- 
ners of a former generation would certainly help 
things. He must inevitably seem to the narrow 
Mrs. Wainwrighf to be the epitome of rips, and fill 
her with apprehension at the thought of his effect 
on Martha. From what she judged of the child’s 
mother she did not possess the imagination to see 
in Barclay Mortimer not a comic but a tragic figure, 
clinging pathetically to life and imbued only with 
a touching eagerness to welcome a grandchild be- 
fore his summons came. So she lied with her 
usual charm, as all kind women should, and took a 
chance. 


226 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“Bill and I would never forgive you if you left 
us in the lurch,” she said. “Before the end of the 
evening Mrs. Wainwright will be finding excuses 
for your gallant history and putting the blame on 
the sirens who led you astray.” And she kissed her 
hand to him. 

Poor old fellow, brought back to childhood by 
the degenerating hand of age. His mouth did 
strange things and his eyes flooded with tears. 
“You — you have a golden heart, my dear,” he 
said. “ I wish that I had been a better man to 
you ! ” 

It might have given some satisfaction to them 
both to know that the Wainwright parents were 
equally scared at the evening which faced them, 
equally anxious to make a good impression. Martha 
loved Bill in a way that carried all before it. And 
Bill, it was perfectly plain, returned it in kind. 
Who were they, then, to punish these two for the 
sins of their parents ? What else could they do but 
accept the inevitable with courage and prayer and 
be as nice as they could to Bill’s father and mother 
for Martha’s sake? 

“ The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good 
and ill together.” 

Bill escorted his mother’s guests as far as the 
bridge, walking with Mrs. Wainwright. Jedburgh 
followed with Martha, telling her a story of Bill’s 
coolness under fire which made her eyes flame with 
pride. Tom and his father brought up the rear, 


THE BLUE ROOM 227 

arm in arm. The boy would marry some day, and 
then what? 

There were several moments of acute jealousy 
and startling realization of the change that had 
taken place in their lives when Mr. and Mrs. Wain- 
wright walked on without Martha, seeing the pic- 
ture of her in Bill’s arms through the back of their 
heads. 

It was not late, but with the feeling that to-morrow 
would be the first of a short series of crowded days 
no one stayed up. Wainwright unhooked his wife’s 
frock. He had n’t the remotest idea how she felt 
about the evening and being a wise man left it to 
her to express herself without questions. “ Those 
Mortimers ” had often been the subject of shocked 
conversation during the last two years, and Martha’s 
friendship with the white-haired lady had caused 
much heart-burning. What now? He himself 
had been completely won over by Mrs. Mortimer, 
had found the Commodore, after the first shock, 
most kind and delightful and had never been in a 
house that he liked so much. Would his wife have 
the moral courage to eat her words and own up to 
a new point of view, he wondered ? If so, he would 
be considerably surprised and very proud. A 
woman who could alter her mind could alter any- 
thing. 

“How did you like the dinner service?” she 
asked, doing her hair and coming to the Great 
Question in her own way. 


228 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Stunning,” replied Wainwright, who hadn’t 
noticed it. 

“ I wish we’d bought some of those hooked rugs 
at Kennebunkport last year. They go best, of 
course, with Colonial furniture, but they would have 
looked nice in this room. I saw several to-night 
that made my mouth water. It ’s a very wonderful 
house, you know, John.” 

“ Is it ? ” He showed no enthusiasm. 

“Well, couldn’t you see that it was? History, 
atmosphere, refinement and everything so spotlessly 
clean and well kept. It ’s like one of the old famous 
show houses in England. It ’s a very fine family.” 

“ Yes, I suppose so.” 

“You suppose so? But, my dear John, didn’t 
you see the story of its achievements in those beauti- 
ful portraits? The Mortimers have been making 
American history since the earliest days. Where 
were your eyes, John? ” 

But Wainwright had been married too long to 
permit himself to laugh. “ I was looking mostly 
at Mrs. Mortimer,” he said, taking out his studs. 

“ John, it ’s my opinion that Mrs. Mortimer, like 
other women who have taken leading positions in 
society, has been maligned. There is a sweetness 
about her, and .... and a simplicity that could 
not belong to any woman who had not lived and 
thought well, — and I very soon noticed that her 
love for Bill, from the way she looked at him, was 
much too great to go with the — the flightiness of 
which she has been accused.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


229 


Bill, — how easily she had achieved that name. 
Unexpected creatures, — women. He was so con- 
sumed with curiosity to hear what she would say 
about the old man that he put the question. It was 
his first mistake. 

“I don’t like him,” she replied. “Like all men 
who dye their hair he looks a little unearthly. I 
don’t mean angelic, but weird, grotesque. One ex- 
pects him to fall to pieces and sits on tenterhooks. 
He looks like an actor leaving a theater after a mat- 
inee in his make-up. Not that I ’ve ever seen one. 
All the same, he must have been very handsome 
when he was young, and I always think that noth- 
ing is a greater handicap to a young man than that, 
especially when he begins with too much money and 
nothing to do. I don’t withdraw my opinion of the 
Commodore. He has done things that must make 
his ancestors, — and do make, he told me so, — look 
down upon him with anger and contempt. But, 
and this he told me too, — he has suffered great re- 
morse and is a changed character. And he gave me 
one beautiful and moving thought, John. He said 
that Bill had done a great deal in his war service to 
wipe the stain from the family but that it was to 
Martha that they all looked to place the name back 
to where the late Mortimer men had left it, — to 
our little Martha, John. Think of that, dear.” 
Her voice broke. 

Wainwright had been thinking of that all the 
evening, and, he had to confess it, without over- 
whelming satisfaction. He did n’t honestly give 


230 


THE BLUE ROOM 


a tinker’s curse about the glory of the name of 
Mortimer. His one intense anxiety and concern 
was for Martha to be happy with Bill. The more 
he saw of Bill the more he found him a good sports- 
man, and a most likable fellow, cheery, sincere and 
without side. His baby, his dear pal-daughter, who 
had stuck to home and played the game with such 
pluck and made herself a place in his house and 
heart that would be cold and empty when she had 
gone, — she was his one consideration and her hap- 
piness his only thought. Never mind Bill’s people. 
Was Bill all right? He was thankful to believe 
that he was. . . . When was his wife coming to 
Bill, by the way, — the one who really mattered? 

But before Mrs. Wainwright brought Bill into 
her summing up of that epoch-making evening, she 
went round by the silver and Albery, the unostenta- 
tious meal and wine, the length of the drawing- 
room, the size of the closets and the quietness of 
Jedburgh. “ I like Bill,” she said finally. “He’s 
— he ’s such a boy. I ’m thankful to be well again, 
John. There are only two weeks in which to get 
Martha’s trousseau together.” 

All of which, especially the last remark, went to 
prove that the white-haired lady’s promise to wangle 
things had been very well kept. 

V 

The excitement of the following days was added 
to by the extraordinary publicity that was given 
the announcement of the forthcoming marriage. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


231 


Martha had never dreamed of finding her name and 
photograph in the papers and was, as might be ex- 
pected, utterly unaware of the fact that this is an 
almost too easy feat to achieve. You might have 
supposed that the Mortimer-Wainwright wedding 
was almost as important to the public as the many 
grave problems which followed upon the heels of 
the war. The history of the Mortimers was 
dragged out of dusty pigeonholes and printed on 
front pages, hashed up in society columns witli 
spicy comments and inaccurately referred to b) 
paragraphists in the Women’s Sections of evening 
papers. Strings of male and female reporters in- 
vaded the quietude of the two houses with the in- 
evitable camera, and privacy was debauched. 

But through it all Mrs. Wainwright drove to 
town daily with Martha, ticking off items on an 
ever lengthening list. It was not easy to buy sum- 
mer clothes in shops which in their race to be ahead 
of time were already given over to autumn wear 
and furs. As to all good mothers, this was a time 
of exhilaration and pain, and Mrs. Wainwright, 
swept out of the individualism of the sick woman, 
enjoyed both sensations fully. 

Wearing an engagement ring upon which Bill had 
spent deep thought and much money Martha fol- 
lowed her mother from shop to shop as in a dream. 
To see her standing among deft-fingered dressmak- 
ers with a genius for placing pins, far away, a little 
odd smile on her lips, not knowing or caring whether 
the things being made for her were good or bad, for 


232 THE BLUE ROOM 

night or day, must have been a little irritating to 
those concerned. 

“ Do you like that effect, darling? ” 

“Yes, Mother.” 

“But don’t you think it would be better with 
this piece brought round like this instead of like 
that? ” 

“ Yes, Mother.” 

“ And are you quite sure about the color? ” 

“ Yes, Mother.” 

“ You don’t think you ’d like a little relief at the 
waist? ” 

“ Yes, Mother, — I mean no, Mother.” 

Whereupon Madame would shrug her Fifty-Sev- 
enth Street shoulders, and Mrs. Wainwright, dis- 
appointed but remembering her own far-off days of 
first love, would go back to her trousseau-collecting 
with a renewed sense of responsibility. 

It was during this period of bustle and fluster and 
continually arriving boxes from New York to a 
house left more or less to the untender mercies of 
his servants, that Wainwright was brought face to 
face with the problem that has to be solved by all 
men who live to give away their daughters in mar- 
riage. Lunching at the Bankers’ Club in the middle 
of the week, one of those over-breezy smack-you-on- 
the-back men went up to him, gave his usual hearty 
and meaningless laugh and proceeded to say all the 
wrong things in quick succession. “ Marrying off 
the daughter, eh, Wainwright? Be a grandfather 
before you know where you are, haw-haw. Bit 


THE BLUE ROOM 


233 


of a sport, Bill Mortimer, reg’lar chip of the old 
block. About time he settled down and became 
domestic. Always had a soft side for the ladies, 
that chap, and picked some fancy ones too, as I 
know. Envied him the blond angel that was 
with him on his yacht when he put into Bermuda 
the winter before the war. I ’ll say she was 
some peach. Congratulations, old man. It ’s a fine 
family. . . 

Wainwright lay awake that night, with the old 
and almost inevitable problem weighing' heavily on 
his soul. Hitherto, in his desire to deal bravely and 
unselfishly with the loss of his little girl, he had al- 
lowed himself to consider nothing but the question 
of her immediate happiness. She had loved Bill 
Mortimer for two years, and had consecrated her 
prayers to his safety from the day that he went away 
to the day that he came back. In the right romantic 
spirit of all young things who have not undergone 
the flattening-out process of boarding-school sophis- 
tication she had exalted this man to the rank of a 
hero, enrolled him among the gods. He was and 
must be without fear and without reproach. In her 
outburst of love and triumph that night in the den 
which had carried Wainwright and his wife off 
their feet, these facts were established beyond argu- 
ment. The mother, like Wainwright himself, had 
been swept before the tidal wave of Martha’s un- 
questioning faith into a blind acceptance of Bill at 
his face value. Their prejudices had crumbled 
shamefacedly after meeting and feeling the charm 


234 


THE BLUE ROOM 


of the Mortimers in their rare old house. They had 
not allowed themselves or been allowed time to con- 
sider the moral side of Bill’s suitability. The mate- 
rial side was so obviously right. In one moment, 
however, Slap-you-on-the-back had thrown down 
the screen and disclosed the evidences of a Blue 
Room in Bill’s life. And now, with his house chok- 
ing with trousseau, the papers reeking with an- 
nouncements, and only a few days remaining be- 
tween the power to act and the tying of the knot, 
Wainwright lay stark awake in the middle of the 
night. And the problem that had to be solved was 
this, older than the hills : was he to exert all his in- 
fluence to save the daughter whose life and mind 
were as spotless as the heart of a rose from the 
hands of a man who had been “ a sport ” and “ a 
chip of the old block,” or fall back on the usual mas- 
culine line of argument in such a case, shrug his 
shoulders, say men will be men, and let it go at 
that? . . . For something over eighteen years this 
child, his only girl, the apple of his eye, had belonged 
wholly to him and his wife, tended and cared for, 
protected and inspired. Suddenly, simply for the 
reason that a total stranger had touched a chord and 
filled her heart with music, was all this to go for 
nothing, was she to be delivered over without a 
word? The blond angel of the Bermuda episode 
alone made Bill unable to hold his rank among the 
gods. It was implied that, as “ a sport,” he had 
other disqualifications. Were this child’s love and 
faith to be left unshaken, or was it Wainwright’s 


THE BLUE ROOM 


235 


duty as a sane man and owner by all the rights of 
fatherhood to hold up his hand, even now, and cry 
out “ This man is unfit ? ” 

Wain wright’s own life had been as clean as a new 
slate. He had begun to earn his living at the age 
of fourteen. So fully occupied had he been with 
his day’s work and his evening classes that there 
had been no time left for looseness, and no spare 
money. There had been nothing of the saint about 
him, nor did he whip himself along the straight path 
with the lash of religion. Ambition and the infi- 
nite capacity for taking on all the work that he could 
get had kept his nose to the grindstone. He had 
marked out a goal for himself and gone for it. He 
had been young when he married, and with the added 
load of a young wife on his shoulders work had to 
become a greater fetish than ever. His inclinations 
had been divided equally between ambition and 
home. He had been blessed with a temperament 
which had no artistic tangents. It was nothing to 
his moral credit, but wholly to his business one- 
eyedness that when the ordinary self-indulgences 
called they were unheeded. He did n’t say to him- 
self now, “ You are a good man, Wainwright, a bet- 
ter man than others,” and advertise his rectitude in 
the market place like a prohibitionist and a Pharisee, 
made up for the part in the ill-fitting self-conscious 
clothes of a crank, ostentatiously subscribing to one 
or other of the numerous creeds through which it is 
difficult to find any real religion. He was not one 
of those grossly pure men to whom everything is 


236 


THE BLUE ROOM 


indecent, — the self-appointed censors of life. He 
had preserved his sanity and his sense of humor, 
had grown in sympathy and tolerance and fully rec- 
ognized the fact that he had himself escaped from 
the penalties of human weakness only because he 
had had no time and no money with which to make 
hobbies of them. When, therefore, he rose in the 
morning, tired but clear-brained, the conclusion that 
he had arrived at was this. Somewhere on earth 
there might be and probably was the man who was 
fit in every respect to be the husband of his beloved 
Martha. If he could be produced it was a hundred 
to one against her falling in love with him. Here, 
however, was Bill who adored her and whom 
Martha adored, a simple, likable, boyish fellow, who 
had been a first-rate soldier. He had already paid 
certain installments for his mistakes. Everything 
has to be paid for. It was probably true that in 
some way in future, as his wife, Martha would be 
called upon to pay the balance. But she loved 
him, and that was part of the willing price of 
love. All Wainwright could do was to be thank- 
ful for small mercies, hope to God that Bill’s love 
for Martha was big and fine enough to make 
him go straight from now on — and leave it at 
that. 


VI 

“ Teddy, old son,” said Bill, one fine morning be- 
fore breakfast, as they turned their horses’ noses 
stablewards after taking them over the jumps that 


THE BLUE ROOM 


237 


had been put up in the fields to the west of the house, 
“ everything ’s going my way. It ’s marvelous. I 
can hardly believe it.” 

“Why? You were born under a lucky star. 
Has n’t everything always gone your way ? ” 

“ Yes, but this time, the one time in my life when 
if things don’t go my way they put me into an un- 
holy smash, I ’ve been afraid to rely on my good old 
star. I don’t mind telling you, old man, that the 
last ten days have been the worst I ’ve ever been 
through. During every hour of ’em all I ’ve been 
haunted with the fear of coming up against the little 
devil who potters about the earth waiting his chance 
to play his fiendish tricks with the plans of mice and 
men.” 

Jedburgh ran his eyes over the good-looking face 
of the bare-headed, sun-tanned man who rode at his 
side. The happy-go-lucky expression which had 
first attracted him to Bill when they had hunted to- 
gether in England before the war was no longer 
there. Nor had it been since he had arrived at the 
house. Worry had drawn several lines under his 
friend’s eyes, and sleepless nights had left behind 
them a nervous tension of which he had been pecul- 
iarly free. Men of magnificent health who fall ill 
for the first time imagine that the world has turned 
upside down and see Death lurking at the foot of 
the bed. Anxiety, which had been an utter stranger 
to Bill, had hit him harder than it does the man who 
had had other doses of it. “ Well, there are only 
three days more,” he said, “ and away you go on 


238 


THE BLUE ROOM 


your honeymoon. I don't see what the little devil 
can do now, Bill.” 

“ I don’t, either.” But all the same he darted a 
look from side to side and rapped his knuckles 
against a branch. “ The trousseau is more or less 
all in. Martha is going to town for the last time 
to-day. Mrs. Wainwright was very cheery with me 
last night, — almost motherly, in fact. And Wain- 
wright, who ’s one of the best, has dropped looking 
at me as if I were a thief who had stolen Martha. 
Tom is a boy one will like most awfully to have as 
a brother. He ’s a corker. One way and another, 
then, there is n’t a cloud in the sky and only three 
days to go before I have the chance to show every- 
body concerned that Bill’s reconstruction is going to 
be a lasting one, and that Martha, please God, shall 
never regret taking him on for good and all. I 
wish I could see you as happy as I am, old man.” 

Jedburgh wrinkled up his eyes. “ Impossible, 
Bill,’ he said. “ While we ’re indulging^in a burst 
of ego I -’ll tell you something. The bloody war, 
which people are gulling themselves into thinking is 
over, has dug into my system. It ’s in me like a 
cancer. I don’t believe there ’s a dog’s chance of 
my getting cured and settling down somewhere to 
breed horses or something, because every time I take 
up the paper and see that all our work has gone for 
nothing blasphemy rises to my head and I ’m an ill 
v man again. It ’s no good your saying, ‘ Why take 
\ it seriously? What the devil’s it got to do with 
\you?’ My answer is, it’s got over four of the 


THE BLUE ROOM 


239 


best years of my life to do with me, my home and 
future, and all the dead bodies that I have only to 
close my eyes to see lying about in vast heaps, for- 
gotten, chucked into that massacre in vain. . . . 
One came out of this orgy of lunacy, — I mean we, 
the older men, — hoping with a great intensity that 
the lessons of the war would be made immediate use 
of and that its horror and madness would have 
shocked some sort of unselfishness and nobility into 
the souls of the creatures who ran us into the mess. 
But, by God, that hope is a vain and foolish one, as 
every single day goes to show. The men who are 
misrunning the Peace show are the same political 
muddlers who misran the war show. Without any 
sense of shame they are in their same old jobs, 
fighting and struggling for personal triumphs, ad- 
vertising and misdirecting in the same old way. 
They have come out of their funk holes to stand in 
the limelight and take the bow with the same old 
effrontery and cynicism, — laughing like the devil 
at ‘ those fools the people/ They have been per- 
mitted to retain their hold of the various govern- 
ments by us, you and me and the other fellow, be- 
cause we don’t care. They are perfectly safe to go 
on drawing their salaries and being promoted every 
time they fail and playing merry hell with all the ap- 
palling problems their own particular war has left 
in its wake. Each gang has its papers to boost them 
and undermine their rivals and every single thing 
they are doing now is not for the good of their 
particular country but to strengthen their political 


240 


THE BLUE ROOM 


party and consolidate themselves. The Govern- V 
ments are like a lot of backyard cats fighting for 
bones. It ’s a sight that must make every dead man 
writhe in his grave, if he ’s got one, and every 
wounded man vow never again to allow them to 
move him one inch. But all the same we shall con- 
tinue to leave them where they are, because it ’s too 
much fag to organize against them, and they ’ll mess 
up the Peace as they messed up the war and go on 
blundering and bleeding the people till the end of 
time. It ’s nobody’s fault but ours, — yours and 
mine and the other fellow’s. We ’ll pay any price 
to buy even half the right to look for happiness, 
and snatch the sunny moments when they come. But 
if we all cared about the universal happiness we 
would n’t let things remain as they are or leave our 
fate to the tender mercies of the professional politi- 
cians who have run civilization into its present 
chaos.” 

He rode his horse into the yard, dismounted, gave 
the bridle to a boy and with a look of apology to 
Bill for his outpouring, walked off to be alone. His 
crise de nerfs demanded either solitude or mul- 
titude. 

Bill watched him go, asking himself who there 
was to give his pal the right sort of tonic. He was 
indulging in the most pitiable of all forms of fool- 
ishness. He was kicking his foot against the 
pricks, by which he achieved nothing but very sore 
toes. Bill did n’t mind being lumped into the “ us ” 
who “ did n’t care.” He frankly did not care. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


241 


The be-all and end-all of his hopes and desires was 
to be safely and happily married to Martha and 
wash out his past record by playing the game. For 
the rest, — well, yes, let Teddy place him among the 
other fellows. Things seemed to come out pretty 
right in the long run, in spite of the rotten politi- 
cians. . . . He wondered whether Teddy Jed- 
burgh would have flung more than an occasional or- 
dinary curse at the heads of the old Bad Men if, 
like himself, he were on the verge of marriage with 
such a darling as Martha. 

The same speculation entered Jedburgh’s head as 
the scent of the ros^ smoothed out his rage. He 
would have rejoiced to believe that he had become 
normal enough to let the earth stew in its own 
grease till the crack of doom if Primrose were going 
to be his wife. But he had come to realize the truth 
of his malady. It was a cancer, as he had told Bill. 
He was one of the numerous victims of permanent 
shell shock caused by the sight of blood and blun- 
ders whose soul contained the germ of revenge and' 
to whom happiness was no longer within reach. 
Sooner or later he would have to go forth and speak 
his thoughts aloud to crowds, and his friends, rais- 
ing their eyebrows in horrified surprise, would say, 
“ Good God, Jedburgh ’s gone dotty. He ’s become 
a Bolshevist.” 

VII 

Cutting breakfast Bill hurried to keep an ap- 
pointment with Martha before she made her last 


242 


THE BLUE ROOM 


trip to town. The path in the lengthening grass 
from the bridge to the Wainwright garden had been 
made by him since the day of his engagement. The 
rolling field was alive with wild flowers, white and 
yellow and purple streaked with the curious red of 
sorrel. Half-tame squirrels, looking out wholly 
for themselves, as usual, darted inquisitive looks at 
Bill as he passed. Sunlight shimmered over every- 
thing. 

Dressed for the journey Martha waved her hand 
when, from the flat rock on the crown of the in- 
cline, she saw Bill waiting for her in the usual meet- 
ing-place. She danced all the way down like a 
wood nymph who had stolen conventional clothes, 
her teeth gleaming and her eyes alight with the sheer 
joy of being alive. And he caught her and swung 
her off her feet, her laughter floating into the air 
like blown petals. There was little of the diffident 
lover about Bill these days. 

It was only between kisses that she was able to 
find out his plans for the day. “ Please, please, 
Bill. I ’ve only two minutes.” 

“ I’m in a foursome this morning,” said Bill. 
“ After lunch I shall be in town too. ,, 

“ Meet me somewhere at five o’clock and drive 
me back. Mother won’t mind. Oh, Bill, you 
must.” 

“ I ’d love it, my sweet, but I have business to see 
to that ’ll keep me in town. I ’m going to dine in 
my rooms and sleep there and see my lawyer again 
in the morning.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


243 


If he had looked quickly behind the nearest tree 
he might have seen the little devil lurking, with an 
evil leer on his face. 

“ And you won’t be here to-night? What an aw- 
ful blow ! This is the last time I shall see you then 
until I stand trembling at the altar.” 

“ Good Lord, why ? ” 

“ It ’s Mother’s idea. It is n’t conventional for 
us to have anything to do with each other during the 
three days before the ceremony, she says.” 

Bill gave a perfectly sincere imitation of mental 
collapse. 

“ But there ’s the telephone, Bill, and here ’s the 
chance for you to write me letters and tell me prop- 
erly all the things you ’ve forgotten to say. 
Exactly how much you love me, — you ’ve never 
really told me that ? ” She crept as close as she 
could and held up her face. 

“ It is n’t easy to tell you that,” said Bill. “ I ’d 
have to be a poet. And if I tried to write it, it ’ud 
take all the rest of my life. And then someone 
would have to edit my spelling.” But the kiss he 
gave her told more than all the volumes in the Pub- 
lic Library. 

“ The last touches to my wedding dress to-day, 
Bill,” she whispered. 

"What’s it' like, Babe?” 

“ White, I believe, but does it matter? ” 

“ Nothing matters except the band that binds 
you to me, darling.” 

There was a loud woo-hoo. 


244 THE BLUE ROOM 

“ That ’s Tom,” said Martha. “ I asked him to 
let me know when the car came round. 

“ Oh, hang the car.” 

“ No, I must go. It gives Mother ten fits to be 
late for an appointment. Good-by, Bill.” 

“ Not Good-by. I hate your saying that.” 

“ So long, then.” She flung her arms round his 
neck. “ I love you, I love you, I love you,” she 
said, “ and then I love you.” 

“ And I don’t just love you,” said Bill, wishing to 
God that those words had never been on his lips be- 
fore. “ I adore you, my dearest. You are every- 
thing in life to me. I only want the chance to show 
you what I mean by that.” 

Once more the loud woo-hoo. 

Martha broke away and up the hill she went, 
turning for a moment at the top to wave her hand 
again. 

Bill went slowly back to the bridge, the brook 
singing its merriest song to the trees under whose 
crowded branches it ran and to the wild flowers that 
watched it from the banks. But he did n’t go home 
at once. He went up to the hill of the Seven Sisters, 
and sat there for a while, looking across the placid 
valley to the smudge of hills beyond. His soul was 
stirred to the exultation that comes to men who love 
beyond expression and who realize, with joy and 
amazement, that they are the master of a young and 
exquisite life, that it is their almost divine responsi- 
bility to act and speak and think in such a way as 
that they shall inflict no bruise, however slight, no 


THE BLUE ROOM 


245 


disillusion, however fleeting. To this simple, hith- 
erto happy-go-lucky, easily led man there came the 
glorious feeling of having received permission to 
begin life all over again, this time not for his own 
pleasure but so that he might give unblemished hap- 
piness to a little partner whose utter faith in him 
was wonderful and awe-inspiring and the infinitude 
of whose love filled him with a deep determination 
to forget self and give everything. Overwhelmed 
with a sense of gratitude for this favor he laid 
himself, in spirit, at the feet of God and vowed, out 
there under Heaven, to dedicate all the rest of his 
years to the child whose heart had been placed in 
his care and to justify himself for having been per- 
mitted to go untouched by the hand of Death so that 
he might be worthy of his trust. 

God would not be God if He were not accustomed 
to be forgotten except in moments of great pain or 
great happiness. 


VIII 

Bill's lawyer belonged to the old dignified school 
of the Eighties, — now almost extinct. His office 
of many discreet and comfortable rooms was in one 
of the old buildings in Union Square. Three part- 
ners composed the firm, and each one sat in seclusion, 
— cheerful, urbane, and leisurely gentlemen whose 
time and perspicacity were wholly at the disposal 
of every individual client. Not for them the mod- 
ern methods of unconcentrated rush, the pernicious 
telephone, undammed in the outer office, which dis- 


246 


THE BLUE ROOM 


turbed consultations with irritating persistence 
nearly every two minutes. Not for them the dis- 
cussion of other people’s business with interrupt- 
ing clerks nor the straining of voices above the con- 
stant ticking of typewriting machines* In a per- 
fectly quiet room, furnished like a study and with 
an air of aloofness that inspired confidences, Bill 
signed his will and testament and the papers relat- 
ing to his marriage settlement, made an appointment 
for the following morning, received the hearty con- 
gratulations and good wishes of his friend and ad- 
visor, and walked uptown under the waning light of 
the afternoon sun with the complete satisfaction 
of being one up on Fate. 

The only evidences of war that still clung by ac- 
cident to Fifth Avenue were Thrift Stamp posters. 
If people looked at these at all it was with the quite 
natural resentment that followed on the heels of the 
revelations of the Government’s colossal waste, ex- 
travagance and mismanagement and with the sense 
of anger at having mortgaged their income to take 
| up Liberty Bonds which, if they were obliged to sell, 
gave them a loss and made them feel, rightly 
or wrongly, that they had been “ used ” as pa- 
triots, — a most unfortunate reaction. The amaz- 
ing Avenue had, otherwise, superficially recovered 
itself. Its great business houses were under- 
mined by strikes and a shortage of labor and 
commodities, but outwardly they were as they had 
been before Germany deliberately raised the lid 
of Hell. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


247 


On his way to his apartment through the un- 
countable crowd, each unit of which struggled ea- 
gerly to escape from the City for the few short hours 
before the equally eager struggle to reinfest it began, 
Bill’s eyes were on the future, — the honeymoon, the 
return to the old house, the quiet routine of a home 
life that had never before been known to him. In 
the first series of pictures that he conjured up 
Martha was the dominating figure, young and sweet 
and laughing, the hope of his family, the core of 
his life and interests. And as these slipped away 
they were replaced by others in which a new and 
tiny presence came, the sight of whom did some- 
thing amazing to his heart. And as he crossed 
Fifty-Seventh Street with his eyes far ahead and a 
smile on his lips a taxi was stopped suddenly on the 
west side of the Avenue and two girls hurried out, 
one paying the driver, the other making a fish-like 
dart across the street to plant herself in front of 
Bill. 

“ It is you,” she said. “ You looked so like St. 
Anthony passing through the rude world that I 
could n’t believe it. Marry first and then become a 
minister. Is that the great idea ? ” 

From the future to the past and back with a jerk 
to the present. “ Oh hello, Birdie,” said Bill. 
“ How are you ? ” 

“ So surprised that you remember little me, my 
dear, that I don’t know how I am. You ’ve been 
doing the aloof stunt pretty successfully since you 
got back, have n’t you, Bill ? ” 


248 


THE BLUE ROOM 


Susie Hatch came up and held out her hand. 

“ My dear Susie, where have you dropped 
from ? ” He looked round to see how many more 
of the occupants of his Blue Room were going to 
descend upon him. 

The nimble-minded musical comedienne with the 
plum-colored lips, the rouged cheeks and the thin 
line of eyebrows which, having recently been 
plucked, left her with a disconcerting expression of 
permanent surprise, gave a gurgle of mirth. 
“ Don’t be nervous, my dear,” she said. “ We ’re 
the only two. We spotted .you from a taxi and just 
had to hold you up to mingle tears. They ’ve been 
washing your family linen pretty well in the papers 
lately, eh ? ” 

The look in Susie’s eyes took Bill all the way back 
to his cabin on the “ Iolanthe ” and those days when 
he had carried the sea-maid into life. 

“ Come along to my apartment,” he said, “ and 
let ’s have a yarn, if you can spare the time.” 

Susie shook her head. Her face was very white. 

I can’t,” she said, quickly. “ I ’m sorry, but I 
can’t.” 

Bill understood and would not have pressed the in- 
vitation. Not so Birdie, who had chirped her way 
through several affairs since her interlude with Bill 
and would probably chirp through several others 
before her feathers began to fall. “ Oh, Susie,” 
she said. “ Don’t talk that way, honey. This 
means a whole lot to me. And I shall have plenty 
of time before I have to do my bit to-night. Thank 


THE BLUE ROOM 


249 


you, Bill dear. We ’d love to look at the old place 
once more, and wish you luck. Be a sweetie, 
honey.” 

In the manner of all young women who belong to 
the baby type and make an asset of a soft and cling- 
ing irresponsibility she gained her point. Beneath 
what Jeanne Dacoral called her pussy-purr-purring 
there was a tremendous amount of will power. If 
she did n’t get what she wanted at the very moment 
that she wanted it something snapped. 

The apartment was in apple-pie order. Itoto had 
been notified of Bill’s intention to spend the night 
in town and had used unaccustomed elbow-grease. 
There was a rumor in the house that the rooms were 
going to be sub-let and the furniture removed. 
Itoto was playing up to be kept on. He wore a 
photographic smile and bobbed about like an air 
bubble in a bottle of cod liver oil. 

“ Ah, these dear, dear rooms,” cried Birdie, 
clasping her hands together and posing, devoid of 
the elementals of sincerity, for sentiment. A 
pretty, plump little person, with a tiny nose and 
round chin and large blue eyes, she might have 
looked charming and attractive but for her ineradi- 
cable belief that it did n’t matter how comic and im- 
possible she made herself so Jong as the clothes she 
wore had been declared “ smart ” by the ladies’ fash- 
ion papers. To see her standing in Bill’s masculine 
sitting room in a silly skirt that foreshortened her 
body, mounted on the high heels of blunt-nosed 
French shoe^ with laces wound up to her calves, with 


250 


THE BLUE ROOM 


a string of pearls on an ample display of bosom and 
an ugly little hat out of which, like a danger signal, 
a yard of costly feathers stuck at a most absurd 
angle, was enough to draw a gasp of derisive laugh- 
ter from any stone gargoyle. And yet she was 
blissfully satisfied at her appearance because it had 
cost some thousands of dollars to achieve and was 
quite the latest thing. Poor dear pathetic women, 
f— how many of them eagerly sacrifice self-respect 
on the comic altar of smartness. 

Susie shuddered at the sight of the place which 
stood for home and went over to the familiar win- 
dow seat for the last time. 

Far from happy or even comfortable, Bill opened 
a box of cigarettes. He would have given a good 
deal to have escaped from these sudden reminders 
of dead days. 

With a long-drawn sigh Birdie kissed her hand to 
the sofa and the pictures and the old familiar sport- 
ing trophies and forced a tear or two without any 
serious effort. But her brain was working and a 
new scheme taking shape. “ Bill, dear,” she said 
tremulously, “ I must use the telephone. Excuse 
me for a moment, will you?” She disappeared 
into the familiar bedroom, shut the door and called 
up Jeanne Dacoral, whom she had just left. The 
number was provided with unusual alacrity. 

Jeanne ? Susie and I are at Bill’s place. Come 
over right away, my dear. I ’m going to make him 
crack a bottle or two. He shan’t be let off without 
a touching scene of farewell and a little speech. It 


THE BLUE ROOM 251 

would n’t be right. Come right over quick. It ’s 
only a step.” 

It was only a step. Jeanne’s apartment was in 
Fifty-Eighth Street, west of the Plaza. 

“ Well, Susie, how goes it? ” asked Bill. 

“ Fine,” said Susie, in armor from head to foot. 

“ How ’s art? ” 

“ Fine.” 

That ’s good. Where are you going for the 
summer? ” 

Haven ’t decided yet, Bill. Somewhere with 
Birdie within commuting distance. Rye, perhaps. 
Her play looks like running through. She can drive 
out after the show.” She smiled up at him and 
gave no sign of the ache that was in her heart. But 
the hand that touched Bill’s as he lit her cigarette 
was as cold as ice. ... A very different girl this 
from the one dressed in a faded blue suit of boy’s 
bathing clothes with her hair bleached almost to sil- 
ver and her eyes as empty of man-knowledge as 
those of a sea-gull. In the awkward pause that 
came upon them Bill asked himself whether the life 
that she had begged so intensely to be given was not, 
after all, better in its effects than the inevitable pov- 
erty and roughness and early loss of beauty that 
must have been hers had she stayed in that sea- 
sprayed village on the coast of Maine, to be the wife 
of a fisherman, and the mother of a school of beach 
urchins. Here, in the city, in spite of her wounded 
heart, she had elbow room for her soul, means with 
which to cultivate her artistic gifts and none of thp 


252 


THE BLUE ROOM 


sordid struggles to wrench a little peace, a little 
comfort and an hour or two for dreams out of the 
daily drab monotony to which he must have left 
her. 

He preferred, at any rate, to believe these things, 
and, man-like, argued with his qualms of conscience 
in favor of this view. 

IX 

“Well,” said Mrs. Wainwright, “that’s over. 
The wedding dress is finished.” And in contra- 
diction of her tone of emphatic relief she heaved 
a sigh of perfectly natural feminine regret. No 
words could describe the emotions of those busy 
trousseau days. They had given her a renewal of 
her youth. To women who have lived through the 
great adventure of marriage however happily there 
must always be much that moves to pity as well as 
to excitement in the wedding preparations of their 
daughters. The chances are all in favor of dis- 
aster. 

“ Yes,” said Martha. “ That ’s over.” But she 
was thinking less of the wedding dress than of the 
hours during which she had been concocting a plan 
whereby she might escape from her mother and see 
Bill, and the rooms in which he had spent so much 
of his life before it became hers. She had made one 
up and it now remained to be seen if she could, to 
use one of Bill’s frequent words, wangle it success- 
fully. 

They passed down the wide stairs of the pompous 


THE BLUE ROOM 


253 


building of the celebrated and exorbitant milliner in 
Fifty-Seventh Street, up which so many women 
hurried daily with sheeplike eagerness to be made to 
Took ridiculous in return for great gobs of other 
_peopl£s goldj ~~ 

A man in the coat of an Admiral, the trousers of 
a General, the cap of a Field Marshal and the face 
of an excellent specimen of protoplasm went off to 
retrieve the car. He moved like an amateur, — one 
who had taken on the job for a joke, or whose sense 
of democracy made it necessary to prove that, al- 
though he chose to be a car-runner, he was just as 
good and probably a darned sight better than his 
employer and her customers. So Martha had 
plenty of time during which to spring her little sur- 
prise. 

“ You know that Elizabeth Bartlett had arranged 
to come to us to-morrow to stay over until the wed- 
ding, Mother.” 

“ Her room ’s ready. I hope she has n’t altered 
her mind. As your oldest friend . . .” 

“ No, no, Mother. Nothing like that. Elizabeth is 
going to leave even her husband to be with me these 
next few days. The only difference in the arrange- 
ment is — and I ’m sure you won’t mind, — that 
she drives home to-night instead of to-morrow, after 
she and I have had dinner in town.” 

“ Which means that I have to make this long 
journey alone.” 

“ Yes, Mother, just this once.” 

The subtle change in the tone of the girl who 


254 


THE BLUE ROOM 


until that moment had been the loving and dutiful 
daughter and who had never conceived the possibil- 
ity of doing anything without a preliminary consul- 
tation came upon Mrs. Wainwright like a thunder- 
clap. They had changed places in the scheme of 
things. The young wife came first now, and the 
elder lady must accept her altered position as “ just 
mother ”, an institution, one who had served her pur- 
pose in life. ... A tiny smile stole over her deli- 
cate prim face and she bowed to her little girl with 
just the suggestion of irony. 

“ Very well, darling,” she said. “ But try not to 
be very late. I would like to get to bed in good 
time after a tiring day.” 

This unexpected humbleness startled Martha and 
for a moment shook her desire to dine alone with 
Bill in his bachelor rooms. “ What a beast I am,” 
she thought, “ and how I hate to deceive her like 
this. But she would think the world was coming to 
an end if I told her what I want so awfully much 
to do, and go home miserable. So it can’t be helped. 
Poor little mother ! She ’s lost me at last.” She 
put her arm round Mrs. Wainwright’s shoulder and 
kissed her. “ You are a brick,” she said. 

At last the car was brought up. “ I ’ll drive you 
to East Sixty-Fourth Street, darling.” 

That was awkward. Martha had telephoned to 
Mrs. Bartlett to expect her at nine o’clock. There 
would have to be explanations if she turned up at 
six. The dinner engagement was a myth. Above 
all things she wanted to enjoy the thrill of this ad- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


255 


venture, her first effort at complete independence, 
as a secret, something about which she and Bill 
might talk in the future as a special romance of their 
own. 

“ No, thank you, Mother. “ I ’ll walk,” she said. 
“ It ’s only a few blocks and I want the air after 
being shut up all day.” 

Never before had this child been allowed by her 
father and mother to go alone in the streets of New 
York. But once more that little smile flickered and 
Mrs. Wain wright bowed again. Youth had come 
into its own. Her day was over. 

Martha shut the door of the car, kissed her hand 
and watched it edge its way out into the moving 
traffic, — a girl on the very verge of womanhood. 
And the little mother, still in the middle forties, sat 
all alone, very upright, with her chin high and her 
hands clasped and the smile playing round her lips. 
But two hot tears rolled down her pale cheeks and 
in her heart there was the pain of a pricking needle. 

“ I won’t go to Bill’s rooms until half past six,” 
thought Martha. “I want to find him there. I 
want him to spring up when I am shown in and rush 
forward to meet me. I want to hear him cry out 
‘ Hello Babe ’ and catch me in his arms as though 
he had n’t seen me for ten years. I want him to 
take me all round and tell me the history of every- 
thing and make me feel that all the years I have 
missed with him are mine just the same. I want 
him to be excited and merry and tender, and feel 
that we ’re stealing two hours out of convention and 


256 


THE BLUE ROOM 


to sit opposite to him at his dinner table as though 
we had been married a long time and feel like a per- 
fectly calm woman of the world with the slips of 
foreign hotels all over my luggage. And then I 
shall not want to go and he won’t want me to go 
and he ’ll hold me tight and kiss me and whisper and 
I shall cling and cry a little and tear myself away 
and drive home with Elizabeth with birds singing 
in my head and my heart in my mouth to wait until 
he puts the ring on my finger and we are never to be 
apart again, never, never.” 

And to keep pace with the thoughts that made her 
eyes sparkle and her breath come quick, the soon-to- 
be-bride went swiftly not up past Bill’s rooms and 
the Netherland Hotel but down past the Gotham 
and the University Club and the beautiful church 
that should have been standing alone in the middle 
of a square as a landmark for all people who had 
found life out and wanted to kneel alone beneath the 
echoing arches and cry in their souls “ Lord, I be- 
lieve. Help thou mine unbelief.”. . . The last 
of the sun glorified the tops of the higher buildings. 
A new moon hung white and shy against a sky as 
clear as crystal. The Fifth Avenue busses, loaded 
with workers going home, dominated the proces- 
sion of traffic which oozed from block to block, on 
the way uptown. Among the few cars that went 
Martha’s way, there was that of the new breed of 
scavenger who hugged the curb and rolled his las- 
civious eyes and invited unaccompanied girls to 
“ Come along in,” — coward and pesterer, fit only 


THE BLUE ROOM 


257 


for the lethal chamber. And there was one other 
but invisible creature who dogged Martha’s steps, 
and that was the little devil of Bill’s imagination 
who had accepted his challenge and was working 
to prove to him how dangerous it is to stand up in 
willful confidence and say, “ Nothing can break my 
happiness.” He was presently to head Martha to 
the Blue Room into which she ought not to look, 
and go on his diabolical way, laughing. 

Turning at Forty-Fourth Street Martha seized the 
chance to cross the road and swung up again, dart- 
ing an unseeing eye at pictures and silver and curios 
and carpets and motor cars, with which the East 
Side shops are full. She sang beneath her breath, 
and from time to time she shut her eyes as they were 
flooded with the waves of love. Her faith in the 
man for whom she had sent her prayers to heaven 
was a passionate intuition. In her childish hero- 
worship she thought of him as a Knight Crusader 
who had fought his way through all temptation to 
stand unspotted at her side. Always in search of 
her he had passed through avenues of women with- 
out having been held by even a single glance. And 
as she entered the building which looked out upon 
the Plaza it was with the unshakable belief that she 
would find him standing in a room hung with 
frames which had been empty until he had seen her 
face. This was to be the last time that they were 
ever to say good-by, and with his kisses on her lips 
she was to go away as in a dream, soon; very soon, 
to be kissed back to wakefulness. 


258 


THE BLUE ROOM 


There was a curious smile on the face of the man 
who took her up in the elevator. She was the 
fourth young woman who had gone up to the rooms 
of Major Mortimer. “ You need n’t ring,” he said. 
“You can let yourself in.” 

She let herself into the hall, her heart as full of 
song as a young spring morning. She heard Bill’s 
voice, speaking, she thought, to his valet. She tip- 
toed to the curtain that covered the arch, and peeped 
inside. . . . 

Bill was standing with a glass in his hand, the 
well-known grin on his good-looking face. With 
her usual display of stockings Birdie Carroll had 
possessed herself of the sofa, her teeth that were al- 
most too perfect to be true gleaming in the light of 
the lamps. Jeanne Dacoral, like a drawing by He- 
rouard in La Vie Parisienne, was riding a chair, 
man-wise, with her arms across the back, her black 
silk legs all glistening. Susie Hatch sat with bent 
head on the guard in front of the empty fire grate, 
holding a glass in both her hands. Several bottles 
stood on the writing table and the air was festooned 
with cigarette smoke. 

Bill had almost arrived at the end of his speech. 

A good boy now and the old days are 
over. When you go by this building you won’t see 
my lights in these windows. Some other poor devil 
of a bachelor will be killing time as I did. But I 
shan’t forget the jolly old times we ’ve had here, my 
dears, or the tunes you used to play for me and the 
songs we sang. Bill isn’t ungrateful. . . 


THE BLUE ROOM 


259 


Springing to her feet, with a burst of mimic tears, 
Birdie flung her wine into the air and her arms 
round Bill’s unwilling neck, kissed him on the mouth 
and slobbered on his shoulder. And then, with a 
wail of despair in which there was more than a little 
of genuine feeling, — she had adored (< Le Morti- 
meur ” as she called him — Jeanne bore down upon 
Bill, took his face between her hands and between a 
series of resounding kisses cried out endearing 
words. Holding her distance and playing Canute 
with her tears Susie held her glass as high as she 
could, shaped her trembling lips to the words “ Good 
luck, Bill,” drank and dropped, her self-repression 
swept before a tornado of weeping. 

And Martha, tottering beneath the broken roof- 
beams of the world, let fall the curtain of the Blue 
Room, fumbled her way to the staircase, went down 
and down until she reached the foyer and the street 
and passed into the Valley of the Shadow. 



PART VI 


I 

Teddy Jedburgh had driven to town that day 
with Bill. He intended to buy a wedding present 
for Martha, — Primrose as he always thought of 
her, — dine with the British Assistant Provost 
Marshal at the Ritz and catch the ten-o’clock train 
home again. He had spent half an hour at Car- 
tier’s, had finally chosen a flexible diamond and plat- 
inum bracelet, a graceful little thing of beautiful 
workmanship, and with this in his pocket and envy 
of Bill in his heart had gone downtown to the 
offices of the British Mission in Whitehall Street 
through the swarming financial district of New 
York, whose narrowest parts, where they were de- 
void of sky-scrapers, bore a brotherly resemblance 
to Threadneedle and Throgmorton Streets in the 
city of London. Here he found that his friend the 
Colonel, who had been badly wounded in the neck 
during the first year of the war and had done very 
brilliant work in the Secret Service until he had been 
placed in charge of the British Military Mission in 
this country, was up to his eyes in business. He re- 


262 THE BLUE ROOM 

luctantly would not be able to keep his engagement 
to dine. 

And so by subway to Forty-Second Street, hang- 
ing to a strap in a jam-packed sardine tin which 
rattled and shook and swerved, he found himself 
back on Fifth Avenue, at the moment when Bill was 
making his farewell speech to three of the girls who 
had helped him to escape from boredom in those 
careless days of his before the war, when he had 
outdone the example of the amorous Commodore. 

With the sense of extreme isolation which comes 
upon a man when he is among a great crowd he 
walked aimlessly up the Avenue, at a loose end. By 
the kindness and hospitality for which America is 
famous he had been made a temporary member of a 
dozen clubs, and intended presently to choose one of 
them in which to eat a solitary meal, with the Even- 
ing Sun propped up against the water bottle. 

His thoughts were of his equally lonely father 
who, at that very minute, was probably taking a nap 
in the quiet reading room of Arthur’s in St. James’s 
Street, three thousand miles away, dreaming, maybe, 
of the “ good old days ” during which the Bad Men 
of British Liberal politics, by their willful determi- 
nation not to recognize in Germany’s immense prep- 
arations the menace which lay over Europe, drugged 
his country into a false security and refused to lis- 
ten to the inspired warnings of the old warrior 
which would have taken the sword out of the mailed 
fist. 

The family house sold to one of those vile and 


THE BLUE ROOM 


263 


vulgar dogs who had grown rich on the blood and 
bones of his countrymen, and now taxed to the teeth 
by the very men who had been too fearful of losing 
public support and popularity to levy taxes for Na- 
tional Service, he could see the old Peer wandering, 
a pathetic and paradoxical figure, the representa- 
tive of a time completely out of date and a class 
almost wiped out of existence, from his rooms in 
Bury Street to his club in St. James’s and back 
again, a poor and homeless man. He could imagine 
his father watching the frantic struggles of an effete 
Government to reconstruct a Constitution which 
they had themselves permitted to be smashed to 
pieces, listening to the ugly and perfectly natural 
growls of a people demoralized and denuded, and 
reading, with a faint sarcastic smile, the long and 
frequent honor lists which bestowed new titles upon 
people who would endeavor to build up a new aris- 
tocracy upon the ruins of one whose gallant heirs 
lay beneath the little crosses in France. At the age 
of sixty-three his father, like many other men of his 
kind, had had to give up his ancient and beautiful 
house to spend his remaining penurious days within 
the four walls of a club and bring them to an end 
in a small bedroom in a street of bachelor lodging 
houses. He and they, as well as the rest of his na- 
tion, had been sacrificed on the altar of Liberalism 
by a dozen selfish and unpatriotic Cabinet Ministers, 
backed by their sycophantic party political news- 
papers all of which had shrieked with terror when 
they saw that Lord Roberts was right and had ad- 


264 


THE BLUE ROOM 


vocated, with trembling knees, that Great Britain 
should ignore her treaty with France. Liberalism 
to the nth degree. 

And as Jedburgh walked up the great Avenue 
that was so typical of the energy, daring and initi- 
ative of a great country still in its youth he asked 
himself what he was to do to make a living as soon 
as his present job came to an end and he had put 
aside his uniform for civilian clothes. LHe believed 
that the writing was even then on the wall for an- 
other and a more disastrous war within the next ten 
years. He believed that Germany would wait only 
until the Allies had scrapped their fighting machines 
and turned entirely to commerce before taking her 
revenge with a great army gathered and trained in 
secret. She would catch her enemies unprepared 
again and swipe them hip and thigh. ^ The blood 
lust was ingrained in her body. He told himself 
that if he were called upon to fight again he would 
refuse, his patriotism killed. But he deceived him- 
self, as did the vast majority of his countrymen who 
had come back to life, disgusted and with wounded 
souls. He would go back from whatever part of 
the world in which he was trying to earn his bread 
and once more offer himself to Death for the Cause, 
the pawn of the same politicians who had battened 
on the blood of his dead brothers. It was inevi- 
table. 

He now looked back at his talk with Bill the night 
of his arrival in New York with a sort of astonish- 
ment. What a fool he had been to lay the blame on 


THE BLUE ROOM 


265 


God for a war with which He had had nothing to 
do. As well lay the blame on the sun for a blight 
on the crops. What a pathetic result of shell-shock 
it was to imagine that he could do anything but hurt 
himself by pulling down his Church and hiding the 
stones in wild oats. The demoralization into which 
he had hoped to plunge was impossible to one of his 
inherent decency and fastidiousness, to say nothing 
of ideals. Even war did not alter a character such 
as his. Training and tradition stood for too much. 
They might be shaken and broken like the walls of 
a cathedral by shells, but the foundations remained. 
iHis month in Bill’s rooms had proved to him that he 
was mentally and physically incapable of finding any 
sort of pleasure in the society of women represented 
by Birdie Carroll and Jeanne DacoralJ The more 
alluring they endeavored to make themselves the 
more they froze his blood. And as to the night life 
of New York, the crowded dancing floors of the 
hotels and restaurants seemed to him to epitomize 
lunacy, and the wailing of Jazz bands filled him with 
an overwhelming depression. CHis reaction to his 
old desires for wife and home and the decencies of 
life was instant and immediate. Then he had met 
Martha and his cure had become complete. The 
irony of the fact that she had been marked out for 
Bill gave him reason to believe that he was not on 
terms of friendship with luck. He would see his 
friend married, rejoin the Mission and wind up his 
work. Then what ? It was a question that he was 
utterly unable to answer. ' 


266 


THE BLUE ROOM 


He had walked as far as Fifty-Seventh Street, 
his height and slightness emphasized by his uniform, 
a noticeable figure in any crowd by reason of his un- 
conscious distinction and thoroughbred profile, to 
say nothing of the story of his gallantry which was 
told by the long line of ribbons on his chest, when, 
with a leap of the heart, he saw Martha facing him 
on the other side of the street, waiting for a line of 
cross-town traffic to come to a momentary end. He 
was astonished to see that she was alone, — this 
country primrose, and by the utter whiteness of her 
face and the agony in her eyes he sensed at once that 
something was wrong, that she had been hurt by one 
of the cursed and indiscriminate cruelties of life. 
He dodged between a motor lorry and a taxi cab, 
being missed by the latter by the eighth of an inch, 
and stood in front of her. 

“ What ’s the matter? '” he asked. 

There was no recognition in the first look that 
Martha gave him. Her eyes seemed to be turned in- 
wards. Her lips were trembling. She looked like 
a flower washed colorless and almost uprooted by a 
thunder-storm. 

“ ^ ’s Jedburgh,” he said, strangely anxious. 
“ What are you doing here alone ? ” He had an ex- 
aggerated notion of the danger of the streets. 

Like a sleep-walker who suddenly regains con- 
sciousness Martha gazed about her for a moment, 
focussed Jedburgh with awakened eyes and put 
out her hand with a touching and almost childlike 
eagerness for protection. “ Oh, Teddy,” she said, 


THE BLUE ROOM 267 

with a great shaking sob, “ take me away, take me 
home.” 

Forcing back a thousand questions, Jedburgh 
hailed a taxi which followed at the tail end of the 
line of traffic, his one idea being to get Martha off 
the street and out of the range of inquisitive eyes. 
And as it drew up at the curb he opened the door 
and handed her in. 

“ Up the Avenue,” he said sharply. “ I ’ll tell 
you when to turn.” 

As the cab moved off and almost before he had 
settled in his seat Martha put her face against his 
shoulder and broke into a fit of dreadful weeping. 

II 

Wondering what dire thing could have hap- 
pened to the sunny girl, the first sight of whom had 
revived his dream of home, Jedburgh put his arm 
tenderly about her shoulder and let her cry the pain 
out of her heart. He could only think, in his en- 
deavor to find a reason for this startling breakdown 
when everything looked so well, that she had sud- 
denly been told of the death of a precious friend. 
Children, it seemed to him, only wept like this when 
death had stalked into their lives, and to him Martha 
in her freshness and simplicity was still little more 
than a child. It never occurred to him, even re- 
motely, that Bill was the cause of these broken flood- 
gates. 

And when, presently, the cab having carried them 
past the Metropolitan Art Museum, Martha pulled 


268 


THE BLUE ROOM 


herself together and sat upright with her hands over 
her face, he got nothing from her except “I’m 
sorry, Teddy, I ’m sorry.” Her loyalty to Bill was 
too strong to permit her to draw a picture of what 
she had seen in the Blue Room, and it remained, like 
a canker, in her soul. 

Jedburgh would have given all his hopes of 
Heaven to have taken Martha in his arms and let 
the cab drive them far out to some quiet place where 
he could keep her all to himself till the end of time, 
to love and cherish and protect. But Bill was his 
friend and was enthroned in the heart of this girl; 
there was no room in it for anyone else. Brother 
was the only part that he could play, and being Jed- 
burgh, the man who stuck to the rules, he would 
play that part well. 

“ What am I to do with you, Primrose ? ” 

Martha saw, with astonishment, that they were 
passing into that part of the Avenue which dwindled 
into a slum of tenement houses and small shops. 
She was alive after this death wound, she found, 
and must catch on again to its obligations. “ We 
must go back,” she said. “ I am to call for Eliza- 
beth Bartlett at nine o’clock. She is going to drive 
me home.” 

Jedburgh looked at his watch. It was only a 
little after seven. He put his head out of the cab 
window. “ Go back to the Plaza,” he said. 

The Plaza! It was within a mere stone’s throw 
of the rooms that she wished she had never entered. 
“ No, not there.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 269 

“ But you must have dinner. Where else would 
you like to go ? ” 

“ Anywhere else.” 

Once more Jedburgh spoke to the solid indiffer- 
ent lump on the box, who cared nothing for the men- 
tal perturbation of his fares so long as his meter 
continued to click. Why should he? 

“ The St. Regis.” 

And so it was in the beetle-browed building of old- 
fashioned architecture which had retained its at- 
mosphere of red plush dignity despite the time’s 
subjection to the twin-devils of crudeness and jazz 
that Martha pretended to have dinner with Bill’s 
pal, the other man who loved her. She ate little, 
though, with the courage and grit that was in the 
Wainwright blood, she smiled and kept the conver- 
sation from flagging. All the time the picture of 
Bill being kissed by those two exuberant and over- 
dressed girls never left her. It sent constant waves 
of agony all over her body and turned her hot with 
jealous anger, and cold with an overpowering sense 
of disillusion, by turns. But it was the sight of 
Susie’s tragic face and the sound of her deep an- 
guish that hit her hardest. Bill’s life had not beer 
hers, as she had believed in her young and simple 
way. He was coming to her not as an original, un- 
read, and untouched, but as a much thumbed book. 
It staggered her. It shook her faith in everything 
that was good.y 

As for Jedburgh, who congratulated himself on 
having been able to cheer Martha out of what in 


270 THE BLUE ROOM 

the light of her recovery he conceived to be a very 
natural crise de nerfs — she was not in the habit of 
being left alone in that swarming city and had prob- 
ably been frightened — he rather pathetically en- 
joyed this unexpected opportunity of having his 
Primrose to himself for a while. He had never 
had the luck before. And he made the best and the 
most of it in his characteristically British manner. 
He treated her as though she were a little princess 
placed temporarily in his care. He strained every 
Anglo-Saxon effort to be merry and bright in his 
quiet, ungestured way, and must have appeared to 
anyone interested enough to watch him to be a 
town uncle attempting to amuse a country niece, or 
a big brother entertaining a young sister whom he 
had not seen since she had left the nursery. He felt 
rather like both these people during the even course 
of this slowly served meal in that religiously lit 
room with its dark wood and red velvet, its innu- 
merable tables of people who liked to get away from 
the heterogeneous crowd and eat without syncopa- 
tion. And once or twice, as he watched Martha and 
realized how young and ingenuous and spring-like 
she was, sitting opposite to him, he felt queerly 
old and inappropriate and out of her generation; 
curiously unelastic and set. Even if she had 
never loved Bill, so different from himself, who 
had succeeded in coming out of the war with 
all his old gaiety and love of life, could he ever 
have stirred this charming thing to interest or 
touched her heart with the warmth of his first love? 


THE BLUE ROOM 271 

He thought not, and felt humble and out of every- 
thing. 

Altogether it was a brief sad interlude, a little 
oasis of companionship which had in it nothing of 
mutual understanding, that both would remember in 
after years. Ever, probably, it would be associated 
with dark wood and red velvet. 

At a quarter to nine, the last of the diners, he 
looked at the watch by which he had timed so many 
of his adventures with Death. “ We had better go 
now,” he said. “Where did you say your friend 
lived ? ” 

With the most intense feeling of relief Martha 
rose. “East Sixty-Third Street,” she answered. 

“ Will you walk or drive? ” 

“ Oh, walk, please. It ’s no distance.” 

It was one of those warm still nights which steal 
quietly on the heels of' a hot hard-working day. The 
sky seemed abnormally high and clear, pitted with 
the lights of the cities of the spirits. The tall 
houses appeared to be short beneath it, and even the 
Plaza, with its tiers of golden windows, looked 
like the house of Lilliputians. It was with 
averted eyes that Martha passed Bill’s apart- 
ment. Jedburgh had no inclination to look up 
at the familiar windows either, that time, or 
make any reference to the man who had all the 
luck. Instead, he ran his hand through Martha’s 
arm. 

“ I want you to promise me something,” he said. 
" Will you?” 


272 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Anything,” she said. This man was very kind. 
He rang as true as a bell. 

“ If, before you are married, you feel you have to 
cry again, choose my shoulder once more. It ’s the 
least I can do for you, and I ’d like to do so much. ,, 

Martha did n’t laugh. She looked up at the man 
in whose eyes there was a curious yearning and 
tightened her arm on his hand. “ I will,” she said, 
wondering if she had any more tears to cry. 

“ I shall probably not see you again to talk to,” 
he went on, quietly. “ I shall come back to town as 
soon as you are off on your honeymoon and after 
that I don’t know what. So this is good-by. I 
wish you a thousand joys.” 

“ Thank you,” she said, choking. Joys — after 
what she had seen ! 

They turned into East Sixty-Fourth Street in 
silence, both on the wings of different thoughts. 
An opulent car was waiting outside number eleven. 
The well-fed chauffeur was humming the air of a 
Winter Garden tune, easily recognizable from its 
peculiar banality. 

“ Thank you again,” said Martha. 

Jedburgh rang the bell that he found on the right 
side of a glass door covered by a screen of wrought 
iron. It might have been in the Avenue Haus- 
mann. 

“ Won’t you come in and meet Elizabeth? ” 

“ No, thanks. I have to see a man at the Lotus 
Club.” He hadn’t. He didn’t know a single 
member of it. Two was company and Mrs. Bart- 


THE BLUE ROOM 


273 


lett, he imagined, was also a believer in that axiom. 
And so he took the little outstretched hand and held 
it for a moment. “ Good-by, then. God bless you, 
Primrose,” he said, gave her the sort of salute that 
he had reserved for Field Marshals, wheeled about 
and walked away. 

Life, like a jig-saw puzzle, is only perfect if all 
the pieces fit. He could never make his picture 
complete — now. 

Could she ? 

Ill 

Martha was afraid to turn out the lights. She 
felt that the bedroom in which she had dreamed 
nightly for two years, and from which she was to 
go forth so soon as the bride of the man who had 
fallen from his pedestal, would be peopled by those 
three girls, come to jeer at her for her hero-wor- 
ship and scream with raucous mirth at her unso- 
phistication. She sat for hours with her face in her 
hands, a little figure of misery, with Bill’s words 
ringing in her ears, — “ a good boy now and the old 
days are over. But I shan’t forget the jolly old 
times we ’ve had here, my dears, or the tunes you 
used to play for me and the songs we sang. Bill 
is n’t ungrateful. . . .” 

Over and over again, remorselessly, she saw 
Birdie spring to her feet, with a burst of tears, fling 
her wine into the air and press kiss after kiss on 
Bill’s mouth. Over and over again, with ever in- 
creasing agony, she saw Jeanne Dacoral get up from 


274 


THE BLUE ROOM 


the chair that she was straddling with her careless . 
display of legs, bear down upon Bill with a wail of 
grief and possess herself of his lips. vAnd over and 
over again the picture of the girl with the golden 
hair and the tragic face who raised her glass and 
dropped like a bird with a bullet through its breast 
flashed in frightful clearness before her eyes^J The 
rest was a blur, — her stumble, filled with dreadful 
thoughts, into the street, her faith all smashed; her 
meeting with Jedburgh; the dinner at the St. Regis; 
the long drive home with Elizabeth Bartlett, whose 
merry tongue never ceased to wag; her smiling 
good-nights to her family, to whom of all people she 
would not confess. All those things were vague 
and shapeless like the unfounded suspicions that 
pass through a brain under an anaesthetic. The hor- 
rors disclosed by her peep into the Blue Room were 
stamped indelibly on her mind, to recur again and 
again through the quiet hours of that tortured night 
and to uproot her passionate and long-cherished 
trust in Bill, which had been as perfect as her faith 
in God/ 

It is true that if she had been less proud and less 
loyal and had taken her trouble to Elizabeth Bart- 
lett, who answered in every detail to the white- 
haired lady’s definition of the modern girl, she would 
have been told that she was making too big a moun- 
tain out of this very ordinary molehill, '^he girl 
who was married to young Bartlett was one of those 
ultra-modern persons, who stepped into the world 
from a fashionable school with nothing to learn and 


THE BLUE ROOM 


275 


so little self-respect that she could regard marriage 
as lightly as a game of cards, as the first stepping 
stone to a series of experiences which would leave 
her unaffected and unperturbed.; “ Anything once,” 
was Elizabeth’s unhygienic motto, and in that spirit 
and with the example of so many easily broken 
marriages before her, she had run off to a registry 
office with Bartlett after a week-end acquaintance, 
rather proud of the fact that he had been very “ hot 
stuff.” ^e had plenty of money, danced like a 
streak and gave her a free hand. That was all she 
cared about. If anyone else came along who had 
more money, danced better and gave an even smaller 
damn for’anything under the sun, Bartlett could be 
chucked, because divorce was as easy as falling off a 
log. If she had been in England during the war 
she would certainly have been numbered among 
those highly civilized children who, widowed twice 
in three years, were married for a third time while 
still in the early twenties. She had all the assets 
that went to the making of such a feat, — a pretty 
face, a slim figure, a command of slang that put the 
great masters into the shade, the staying power of a 
camel, 'and- the quiet disregard for underclothing 
that had been achieved only by the most finished 
Greeks in history. 

“ My dear,” she would have said, utterly satis- 
fied with the decadent effect of her black chiffon 
pajamas, “ Bill Mortimer is thirty-five. Does he 
look like the sort of small-town boob who has neg- 
lected all his chances in order to cultivate sweet peas 


276 


THE BLUE ROOM 


and quote Elbert Hubbard to the elderly spinster 
who runs the village Library? (He’s one of the 
best-looking things in trousers and has had the run 
of the world. He ’d be a freak if he had n’t played 
the good old game for everything it ’s worthy And 
now you have the luck to catch him on the rebound 
at the moment of his life when he ’ll make the ideal 
husband and go to heel humbly whenever you crack 
the whip, so what ’s the grumble ? Drag him to the 
altar, gold dig systematically while the going ’s 
good, and when he ’s doddering into nervous dys- 
pepsia shake him and begin all oyer again with a 
own age. That ’s the great idea, 

irself something of a freak in these 
most civilized days and the daughter of Wain- 
wrights, Martha said nothing and retired into the 
secrecy of her room to tremble under the effects 
of this earthquake, this upheaval of her illusions, 
to suffer from that form of soul-shock which only 
attacks those of our girls who have not grown with 
the times. 

The unheeded hours slipped away while the moon 
and stars kept vigil and still Martha sat with her 
face in her hands, a little figure of misery. But 
when the day broke and the earth stirred and life 
rose from its bed to resume its duties, she got up, 
tired and aching, dressed and crept downstairs. 
The Seven Sisters seemed to call her with the prom- 
ise of sympathy, and she went through the dew- 
spangled garden and along the path through the lush 




your 


man of 
dearie.”" 

ut being 1: 


THE BLUE ROOM 


277 


of grass to the hill from which she had so often sent 
up her prayers to Heaven for the safe return of Bill. 
Here, in this roofless cathedral, with the matins of 
the birds in her ears, , she went down on her knees 
once more and asked for help and guidance, be- 
cause she found herself stumbling blindly in a maze 
of doubts, the only way out of which seemed to her 
to lead away from Bill, even although her wedding 
dress was ready, the ring waiting for her and the 
two families within two days of standing before the 
altar. 

j But no help came. Instead, as she strained into 
the future, she could see the figures of those girls, 
— and there might be others, — intruding into her 
life, springing up, not in flesh and blood perhaps, 
but certainly in imagination, to stand, in crucial mo- 
ments, between herself and Bill. Also she could hear 
her inward questions as to whether Bill’s endearing 
words had not all been said before, — shallow repeti- 
tions of former love affairs, and feel the awful sus- 
picion that in his moments of silence or his dreams at 
night he might be living over again the old days for 
which he was not ungrateful, in the Blue Room that 
he imagined was locked against her. 

She rose from her knees and turned to the Seven 
Sisters, whose old arms seemed to be straining to 
touch her. “ I can’t go through with it, I can’t go 
through with it,” she cried out. U I can’t. I can’t. 
It ’s broken my heart and killed my faith. I wish 
I had died believing.” 


278 


THE BLUE ROOM 


IV 

All that day and the next saw bustle and excite- 
ment in the two houses, — the old and the new. It 
had been decided that the ceremony should not take 
place in the village church but in the drawing room 
of the Wainwright house. It was to be a quiet 
affair witnessed only by the members of the two 
families and performed by the minister before whom 
Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright had stood all those years 
ago. From the white-haired lady’s gardens masses 
of ravishing flowers were sent over, all of them 
charged to waft on their scent to the little bride the 
affectionate good wishes of those that remained un- 
plucked. 

Wainwright gave himself two days’ holiday os- 
tensibly to lend a hand with the preparations, in 
reality to see the last of Martha as his own particu- 
lar property before he handed her over to her hus- 
band. In a state of inarticulate emotion he de- 
voted the first of these days to driving her about the 
country, giving her lunch at one inn and tea at 
another, saying not one single thing with which his 
heart was full but doling out to the girl with the 
queer look in her eyes an intimate dissertation on 
the intricacies of banking which gave her no clew as 
to how to make her escape from the now meaning- 
less ring. If it was a painful duty to them, it was 
at any rate all the more useful to Mrs. Wainwright 
because of their absence from the house in which, 
as it was, Tom and Elizabeth Bartlett got badly in 


THE BLUE ROOM 


279 


her way. She had her own views as to how things 
should be done, and since, without her, this marriage 
would have been impossible, she intended by hook or 
by crook to do them according to those views, Tom 
and Elizabeth notwithstanding. Discovering this 
early in the proceedings the giddy Bartlett led Tom 
to the tennis court and reduced him to a pulp. The 
smile on Mrs. Wainwright’s face as she saw their 
strenuous white figures out in the sun must have 
stirred the sympathy of all departed housewives. 

In the Mortimer house, Denham, directed by the 
Commodore, took charge of Bill’s packing, while 
the white-haired lady and Bill endeavored unsuc- 
cessfully to put in a spoke. Anyone would have 
thought from the Old Rip’s excitement that he was 
to be the happy man and that Bill was his ancient 
and senile parent. The comedy of it all was 
brought up to a quick and pulsating moment of 
drama when the old devil, as Denham called him, 
suddenly wheeled round upon his wife and son and 
cried out, “ For the love of Heaven give me my 
head. Do you suppose that I shall leave anything 
out after having packed my things for at least a 
dozen honeymoons? My God, you two, use your 
imaginations and permit me to finish my job in 
peace.” 

Whereupon Bill escorted his mother to the hill 
of the Seven Sisters with a lunch basket, a box of 
cigarettes and a tin of tobacco, and lay for hours 
with his head against her shoulder painting pictures 
of a golden future, the past forgotten, while Lylyth, 


280 


THE BLUE ROOM 


the mother, old now and nearly ready to say good- 
by to a life which had had many compensations, 
let her thoughts stray back to the far off time when 
she too had been brought forward to enter the mar- 
riage state. 

The superfluous Jedburgh wandered out alone, 
looking no further forward than the moments when 
he would fulfill his duties as Bill’s best man and 
watch his friend drive away, later, with the Prim- 
rose. He took with him, on his aimless walk, a 
new and growing belief that he had been strangely 
lacking in perception to have dismissed Martha’s 
tornado of tears as the mere reaction from girlish 
fright in being left by herself in the crowded City. 
He was anxious, for Bill’s sake. 

It was in the lane that led to the stone erections 
on each side of the driveway to his house that Wain- 
wright took a leap out of his shyness and let Martha 
see into his warm and simple heart. He stopped 
the car suddenly at a place where the bald house was 
hidden by a group of Christmas trees, and put his 
arms round the precious child who had played 
straight and shared his den and become the living 
embodiment of his domestic dreams, the reward 
for his ceaseless efforts to make good. “ You won’t 
forget your old father,” he said, in a voice that shook 
with emotion. “ You won’t forget me, darling.” 

And Martha, who knew that she must go as soon 
as she had found a way, hid her face against his 
chest. It would have been better if she had never 
seen Bill and loved him so much. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


281 


“ I shall miss you, — oh God, I shall miss you, 
my pet. It had to come, I know that. Parents 
only bring up their children for other people to take 
away. That ’$ the law of life and I ’m not grum- 
bling. But it ’s happened before I was quite ready 
to give you up, and I shall be a sort of — of 
cripple when you ’ve gone.” 

He held her with a kind of passion, while the 
tears that he had kept back since the night that she 
had gone into Bill’s arms streamed down his face. 

And Martha, afraid to let him see the trouble in 
her eyes, put her hand on his lips. If only he would 
spare her by forgetting to wish her the happiness 
that she could never enjoy. She couldn’t bear to 
hear that. She could n’t. She could n’t. 

But he did, as he was bound to do. “ I like Bill,” 
he went on. “ As your mother says, he ’s just a 
great boy, eager to make a home for himself and 
settle down. Not because he told me so, but from 
everything about him I know that he loves you as 
you deserve, my sweetheart, and you ’ll have a 
splendid life and bring that old family back into 
fineness again. I wish you every joy and I ask 
God to bless you. But you ’ll remember the old 
man, sometimes, and come and sit on the other 
side of the desk again, won’t you, — for auld lang 
syne ? ” 

Martha had wept her tears away, but she crept a 
little closer to that good and guileless man who had 
made it possible for her to erect a pedestal for Bill, 
made of the solid rock of faith, and trembled. 


282 


THE BLUE ROOM 


And they sat in silence, in the exquisite sympathy 
of father and daughter, and clung to each other for 
a little while, before parting. 

When, presently, the car was driven under the 
porte-cochere and Martha ran up the steps, Wain- 
wright pottered about the garage for half an hour 
so that he might present his ordinary face to his 
wife and son. Thank God, his boy would stick to 
the nest for a bit and was to join him in his business. 

Bill, in his dressing gown, long after everyone 
had gone to bed, was marching up and down his 
room in the old house that night, thinking of Martha 
and trying to find uncolloquial words with which 
to offer up thanks for his reconstruction. He was 
moved to a mixture of joy and solemnity. His 
Miss Respectable was the most adorable thing that 
the angels had ever watched over. He loved her 
like a father and a mother and a lover all in one. 
She held him in the palm of her hand. He was, 
being the Bill Mortimer who had come back from 
the shambles and the Bill Mortimer who had rotted 
in his youth, painfully and even tragically depend- 
ent upon her. She stood' for all that he hoped and 
intended to become. She was purity that demanded 
all the best and the most tender of him. She was 
youth that was to make him young again. She was 
rectitude that was to call out of him the example and 
tradition of his forbears, hitherto ignored. She 
was courage that would set him in step with her 
along the path to fatherhood. She was pride that 


THE BLUE ROOM 283 

would demand for her truth and cleanness and re- 
spect. 

These were great and uplifting hours in the life 
of this man Bill, who had come out of all his self- 
indulgence with a surprising naivete, a tremendous 
desire to remake himself and a sensitiveness that 
was as keen as a woman’s. And he enjoyed them 
and the ecstasy that they gave him, for all the sense 
of unfitness which crept up behind them, and per- 
haps a little more because of that. No man, if he 
deals honestly with himself, wishes to say, on the 
verge of marriage, that he is up to the standard of 
the girl that he has won.. A man’s reach must 
exceed his grasp, or what ’s a Heaven for. To be 
unworthy — not too much but a little — makes his 
success so much more worth while, so much greater 
an achievement. It is an inspiration, an urge. It 
elevates marriage far above the ordinary run of 
great adventures. It places it among crusades. 
It puts the glamour about it of high romance, 
of personal amazement, and makes a man say 
to himself, with a rare humility, “ Please God, 
I shall be deserving.” And what more hope- 
ful beginning could there be in the working out of 
the everlasting problem so seldom solved than 
that? 

It was two o’clock when Bill’s door opened very 
quietly and the white-haired lady stole in. Unable 
to sleep for the flights of thoughts that circled about 
her bed like swallows, she had risen to put her lips 
to the forehead of the man who once had been her 


284 THE BLUE ROOM 

very own, the lad all dependent, to whom she had 
been Queen. 

“ Bill ! ” she said, and drew up short, disappointed. 

“ Anything wrong ? ” Bill was immediately at 
her side. 

“ No, indeed,” she said. “ Everything is very 
right, my dear. I tiptoed in expecting to find you 
fast asleep, and to put the clock back to the time 
when I was the only woman in your life. What 
you call an orgy of sentimentality, Bill. That ’s all. 
Very forgivable under the circumstances.” She 
spoke lightly and gave one of those soft laughs of 
hers. She had become an adept at hiding her feel- 
ings. Her hair was hidden beneath a lace cap and 
she wore a clinging peignoir of an egg-shell blue. 
Imagination, reversing the perspective of her senses, 
had made the past the present, Bill a few years old 
and herself a girl once more. Beauty had come 
back to her face and figure for a moment. 

An orgy of sentimentality? He had preened 
himself on having used a clever phrase. But there 
was no affectation of fine feeling about all this, — 
his desire to reconstruct, his love for Martha, the 
ambition of his old people to hear the pattering feet 
of young Mortimers, the emotion of the Wain- 
wrights, the birth of Martha’s star. It went to the 
making of the first exquisite reality of his life, he 
knew. And he knew, also, as he looked into his 
mother’s eyes, — the magic of the moon on the 
sleeping earth, — that she had come to his room to 
stand for a little while in a waking dream that gave 


THE BLUE ROOM 


285 


him back to her, the boy who had never deeply real- 
ized her mother passion or put into words his grati- 
tude for her love. 

He put her into a chair, and letting down his 
fourth wall, knelt at her feet, with his arms round 
her waist. “ Mum,” he said, “ I wanted you to 
come to-night. I wanted to tell you that it ’s all the 
you in me that ’s come to the top at last and is going 
to help me to be a good boy now. I wanted you to 
know that I have n't played the fool all these years 
quite as unkindly as I might, because of the things 
you said over me when I slept here as a kid. That 
is n’t much to say, but it ’s something, and it goes to 
show that the careless devil in me was n’t able to 
let me forget altogether the effect of your love. 

; I ’m awful sick at having gone back on you, Mum 
[darling. If I had my time over again I’d try 
mighty hard to live up to your standard. But 
what ’s done is over and can’t be altered. The 
future ’s mine though, and I want you to be very 
[sure that whether you ’re here or not I ’ll take you 
with me through it all to keep me straight and 
faithful and make me come out at the end as the 
son you would have had me be from the beginning. 
So help me God.” 

The little cry that broke from that woman’s heart 
must have made the angels weep. 

And all that day and the next the sun shone and 
the birds sang and peace hung over the land, and not 
one of the people in this human comedy ever sus- 


286 


THE BLUE ROOM 


pected that the dea ex machina, the little leading 
lady, the young bride to be, was trying, like a pris- 
oner condemned to death, to find a way to live, to 
break from a bond which, although to be blessed 
by the church, had become unholy in her eyes. 

V 

Barclay Mortimer, made up for a wedding and 
entirely outside himself, according to Denham, 
put the bridegroom through a close inspection. 

“ Urn,” he said, walking slowly and disconcert- 
ingly round the nervous and jumpy Bill. “ I sup- 
pose you ’ll have to go like that.” 

“What’s the matter with me? Oh, curse this 
collar.” 

“ My dear fellow, why did n’t you take me to 
that damned tailor of yours? He’s waisted you 
too high. He ’s cut your tails in the appalling mod- 
ern way that allows them to bulge open at every 
movement you make. He ’s given you two buttons 
too many at the top of your waistcoat ” — he called 
it westkut as you may suppose — “ and he ’s skimped 
on your trousers in the German American manner 
that puts some of the men of my country among the 
comics.” 

“ I took what he gave me,” said Bill, with a val- 
iant effort to retain his temper. 

“ I see that, my boy,” replied Barclay Mortimer, 
dryly. “ But don’t you know that the only way to 
get civilized garments from a tailor is not to let 
him make what he wants but what you intend to 


THE BLUE ROOM 


287 


have, if necessary, at the point of a revolver? 
There ’s not one thing right about you, Bill, I re- 
gret to say. You don’t look remotely like a gentle- 
man, my dear fellow. Thank Heaven it ’s to be a 
family affair from which the evil eye of the camera 
will be absent. Scrap those dreadful things as soon 
as you can get out of them, but don’t give them to 
Denham. He knows clothes.” 

Denham bowed to hide his chagrin. Having the 
run of the Commodore’s wardrobe and everything 
that he discarded he certainly would not have been 
seen dead in Bill’s things. He could have sold the - 
damned things to the village undertaker, though. 

Bill was no pacifist. He had been struggling for 
two days to say nothing to hurt the old man’s feel- 
ings, but this was the limit of his endurance. “ I 
know I look like a cursed cow-puncher in Sunday 
reach-me-downs,” he said, “ and I ’m as nervous 
as a cat now. Why go out of your way to make me 
worse? You want me to get married, don’t 
you? It won’t amuse you if I can the whole show, 
will it? Because that ’s what I shall do if you pick 
on me any more.” He turned savagely on a hat 
box and let out a kick that sent it into the middle of 
next week. 

There was a cry from Denham and a groan from 
the Commodore. A new and glossy hat was in that 
box. A nice-looking thing it would be after this 
brutal treatment. 

And then Bill burst into a great laugh and put his 
arm round his father’s shoulders. “ Good Lord,” 


288 


THE BLtJE ROOM 

he said. “ Anyone would think to see all this tem- 
perament that we were long-haired musicians or 
something. After all, Dad, I ’m going to be mar- 
ried, not buried. Let ’s be cheerful. Let ’s see it 
through with a grin.” 

For the first time for forty-eight hours the old 
man’s sense of humor came through. “ The size 
and shape of my grandchild don’t depend on the 
cut of a coat,” he said, with a touch of coarseness, 
and joined in the laugh. Whereupon the heat of 
the atmosphere became normal once more and busi- 
ness proceeded without further hitches. 

It was true that there were a number of bad 
points in Bill’s appearance, but they could n’t take 
away from the excellence of his tall wiry figure, his 
well-cut, sun-tanned face or the expression of boyish 
excitement in his large dark eyes. On the other 
hand, the absolute perfection of the Old Rip, who 
might have stepped out of the pages of a book of 
English fashion plates, served rather to call atten- 
tion to the sadness of his dyed hair, the pouter pi- 
geon effect caused by his corsets and the general ap- 
pearance of pathetic time-wrestle that was all about 
him. Life is very just in its compensations. 

In the meantime the white-haired lady, all ready 
for the ceremony, had driven unnoticed into the 
village, spent ten minutes on her knees in the quiet 
church and returned to walk among her roses, with 
a little smile on her face. Her scheme to bring 
Martha forward, the last and most urgent of all 
her schemes, had worked with amazing smoothness, 


THE BLUE ROOM 


289 


she thought. By the grace of God she would not 
now pass out of life without having the joy and de- 
light of welcoming a grandchild to the old house. 
And she congratulated herself on what she looked 
upon as her master-strok^ as she passed slowly from 
rose to rose in that charming garden of hers. 

Little she knew, poor lady, of the cruel and shat- 
tering plan that Martha was just then making to 
punish Bill for his Blue Room. 

Jedburgh was reading out in the sun when Bill 
burst upon him like a tornado. “ Have you ever 
been to a wedding in a drawing-room before, 
Teddy? ” 

“ No, never.” 

“ Great guns ! ” 

“ Why, what ’s the trouble ? ” 

Bill answered the question by asking another. 
Everything may be excused in a man on the verge 
of being married. “ Will you do something for me? 
Will you go over to the Wainwrights’ and interview 
the padre ? The old boy stayed there last night and 
will be hanging about doing nothing. Ask him the 
routine for me, Teddy. Get him to tell you when I 
march in and how, and where I stand when I get 
there and all that. I ’m awful sorry to work you, 
old man, but I don’t want to make any bloomers and 
look a bigger boob than I feel in these frightful 
clothes, and Mrs. Wainwright will throw a fit if I 
stand on the wrong side of something. If you get 
all the dope you can prime me up when I drive 


290 


THE BLUE ROOM 


round with mother and the old man. I ’ve tried to 
get it from him, but he ’s almost as fluffy-minded as 
I am to-day, and mother says she could n’t venture 
to suggest the Boston way of doing this thing. 
Hang about on the steps and pounce when you see 
me. It ’s frightfully important, old son, or I 
would n’t ask you to do it.” 

“ It is frightfully important, Bill, and must be 
done,” said Jedburgh, gravely. He had never seen 
his friend in such a condition of mental and 
physical frazzle. He had obviously to be humored. 
“ Can I take a car? ” 

“ Take the lot. You ’ve got the ring all right? ” 

“ Rather.” 

“ Sure, Teddy ? Absolutely sure ? ” 

Jedburgh brought it out to prove the fact. 

And Bill heaved a sigh of relief. He was a very 
worried Bill. “ I don’t know what I should do 
without you, Teddy. You ’re like one of the lions 
in Trafalgar Square. God bless you, old man.” 

“ God bless you, old man, and the little bride.” 
And they shook hands as though they were about to 
part for many years. 

But the car had only gone halfway down the 
drive when there was a tremendous shout. The 
chauffeur clapped on the brakes. Bill came along- 
side under the old trees, breathless. 

“ Did I ask you if you had the ring, Teddy? ” 

“ No,” said Jedburgh, more gravely than before. 
“ But I have.” And once again he held it out to 
prove the fact. 


THE BLUE ROOM 


291 


And this time the old grin spread itself over Bill’s 
face, and he gave a gesture with which to express 
his honest belief that he was as near protoplasm as 
a bridegroom can get and his profound apologies 
for the very natural mishap. And then he walked 
back saying aloud hoarsely the responses that would 
be presently demanded of him. Married, — and to 
that bewitching girl with her flower face and the 
honesty of a lighthouse. It was inconceivable. If 
the men of his old regiment had been able to see 
him then they would have blinked in amazement. 
They would n’t have recognized the old cool, light- 
hearted Bill. 

In the blue sky there was a cloud a good deal 
larger than a man’s hand. 

Jedburgh interviewed a garrulous maid in the 
hall of the Wainw right house. The drawing-room 
door was closed. But everywhere there were flow- 
ers. He was told that Miss Martha had been 
dressed some time, that Mrs. Wainwright and Mrs. 
Bartlett were now dressing and that the gentlemen 
were downstairs in the billiard-room having a cock- 
tail. Would he go down ? He would. And he was 
left because someone called from the dining room, 
in which he could see a beautifully decorated table. 
Not knowing the geography of this house, in which 
he had never been before, he went to the end of the 
hall and opened a door that he imagined would 
lead downstairs. It gave out, on the contrary, to 
the deserted piazza at the back, across which he 


292 


THE BLUE ROOM 


saw a girl creeping on tiptoe with a face as white 
as a white rose, dressed in everyday clothes and 
carrying a small bag. . . . Good God, it was 
Martha ! 

And then, as though a shutter had opened in his 
brain, he knew that Bill had been the cause of those 
dreadful tears and that look of agony over which 
he had puzzled by day and night. In an instant he 
was out and with arms outstretched in front of the 
escaping girl, blocking the way. 

“ Let me pass,” cried Martha. 

“ Not in this world,” said Jedburgh. 

“ Let me pass, I tell you.” 

“ I tell you, no.” 

There was a dive, a scuffle, a little heartrending 
cry . . . and Jedburgh, gripping Martha tight by the 
wrist, drew her into a glassed-in sun-porch and shut 
the door. 

“ Now tell me,” he said. “ Quick.” 

“ I can’t go through with it, I can’t. I ’ve waited 
till now, hoping that I could stay to spare mother 
and father, but I can’t. Oh, let me go.” 

“ You don’t know what this would mean to the 
two families, and I ’m the only living man who can 
tell you what this would mean to Bill. It can’t be 
done. It ’s too late.” 

The bag fell with a clatter and Martha’s hands 
went up to her face. 

And Jedburgh put his arm round her shoulder 
and drew the trembling thing against his heart. 
“ What is it, Primrose? Tell me.” 


THE BLUE ROOM 


293 


There was a rush and tumble of words, like a fall 
of pent-up water. . . . “ I love him and believed in 
him and thought he had never loved or kissed any- 
one but me. He never told me when he came back, 
and all the time he ’s been away I ’d been building 
a mountain of faith on which he stood. I went to 
his rooms that day in town, to see him in them be- 
fore he came to me, to see the emptiness of his life 
until I filled it with my love and — Oh, I can’t go 
on, I can’t go on.” 

“ Go on,” said Jedburgh, although he believed that 
he could guess. “ Into the Blue Room thou shalt 
not look ! ” 

And without tears, for they had all been wept, 
but with a voice shaking with jealousy and anger 
and grief and broken faith she painted the pictures 
that had never ceased to pass across her brain and 
which had driven her to this, after two days’ agony 
of struggle, and from a marriage into which they 
would follow her and divide her like walls of doubt 
and suspicion from happiness and security. And her 
last words were difficult to refute, difficult to argue 
against. “ It ’s unfair,” she cried out. “ It ’s un- 
fair. . . . Let me go. I can’t go through with it. 
I shall never forget.” 

And there was half a moment of silence in which 
Jedburgh also saw the picture that he had painted in 
his dreams by night and day, — home, with a prim- 
rose in its garden. It came and went, like a mirage, 
like a dream. But he took her hands from her face 
and looked deeply into her eyes. 


294 


THE BLUE ROOM 


“ Do you love Bill in spite of what you have dis- 
covered? Tell me that.” 

“ Yes,” said Martha. 

“ And will you never marry any other man if I 
let you go ? ” 

“ No,” said Martha, “ never.” 

“ Then go up to your room, my dear, and get 
back into your wedding dress. Of all the people 
alive you are the last one to usurp the punishment 
of God for what Bill has done before he found you. 
Only from the moment that he came to you have 
you the right to his life. That ’s yours, and because 
he loves you it will be worth having, worth shaping, 
worth building up into a good and blessed thing. 
Let the dead past bury its dead. It ’s a gruesome 
trick to fumble about among the gravestones. He is 
your man. You love him. Without him you will go 
barren through life. It ’s not yours to forgive or to 
forget. It ’s not yours at all. It ’s his, — to regret 
and to pay for in remorse. You have no share in 
his bills until to-day. You may see them all from 
now on, because he loves you, and for your sake 
they will be honest and mutual. Do you under- 
stand?” 

The color had come back to her face. She 
stood upright once more as though a crushing 
weight had fallen from her shoulders. And in her 
eyes there was fire again and something that 
only comes to youth in moments of sudden under- 
standing. And she took his hand and pressed her 
lips to it. 


V 


THE BLUE ROOM 295 

He had prevented a catastrophe and trans- 
lated pride into humbleness. “ Come quick,” he 
said. 

He opened the door, gave her the bag, and led her 
into the house, made sure that nobody was about, 
and let her go. She flew upstairs to her room on the 
wings of love. 

Did he believe in all the arguments that he had 
used to bring her back to sanity? Yes, because Bill 
was his friend and his feet were deep in traditions. 
No, because Martha was in his heart and the word 
‘ unfair ’ was right. 

But once again the picture of his dream flashed 
across his mind as he stood at Bill’s side, before the 
altar of flowers, with the ring between his fingers, 
miles away in loneliness. And very faintly the 
grave and lovely words of the marriage service 
came to his ears, binding Bill and Martha with 
a bond that only death could break. The ring 
delivered up, he saw the look on Bill s tanned 
face that made him rejoice for the future happi- 
ness of the little girl whose love was like a star, 
and when he saw the tears spring to her eyes 
he was glad for the accident which had made 
him open the door to the piazza, — which was 
not an accident, for God is very good to His 
children. 

And as those two, for better or for worse, stand- 
ing among the parents to whom they meant so 
much, came finally together, he turned away quietly 
and went out into the sun. 


296 


THE BLUE ROOM 

“ In the world of dreams I have chosen my part. 
To sleep for a season and hear no word 
Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art, 

Only the song of a secret bird.” 


THE END 




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